Madness Becomes Her
by Sienna Frills
Summary: Harley is only a vulnerable grad student when she starts interning at Arkham. But a strange turn of events finds her playing psychologist to Gotham's worst criminal, the Joker. And what starts as a game of tug-o-war, turns to a battle for love and sanity.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note:** Cast of Characters can be found on my profile.

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Prologue**

The sliding of the ward door grates on my nerves as it closes behind me with a loud scrape and latch of the lock, and I jump. Ahead of me, the main hallway stretches and branches into a labyrinth of corridors, and I suddenly feel lost among them- as if this is my first day at Arkham, as if I'm just a grad student again, with only my protective I.D. badge to separate me from the inmates. Except this time the fluorescent lights are blinding, the locks are all bolted against me, the cuffs are on _my_ wrists, and I'm the one wearing the bright red jumpsuit.

"Come on, Quinzel."

The guard pushes me forward- a burly guy with the name tag Benson that I don't recognize- and I shuffle along the stone floor.

As we pass cells patients stare out at us. They don't seem surprised to see me, which I find strange. But then I remember how quickly gossip spreads through the network of Arkham's children, and I realize that they must have been waiting for me ever since my papers were stamped yesterday. Clinically, legally, completely insane. I cringe.

"Doctor."

Up ahead a woman is sticking as much of her body out of her cell as she can, she sneers at me as we slowly approach her.

"Doctor," she says to me, her voice faux-sincere as she pleads for my attention. "Oh, _doctor_, can you help me? I'm so c-c-c-c-crazy and I know you can help me!" She breaks off into hysterical laughter and a dozen or so other patients join her. This isn't maximum security and this isn't the ward I worked on, but these women recognize me nonetheless, and they find it positively hysterical to find that the tables have turned. Pretty soon the entire ward is laughing, their cackles bouncing off the stone walls in horrible echoes.

Suddenly, I'm overcome by panic and I turn around, saying, "I don't belong here," and I try to hurry back down the hallway. Benson, however, has a firm grip on me and he turns me back around before I can get anywhere.

As he pulls me forward he says, "You're not going anywhere."

"What's the diagnosis on _you_, doctor?" another woman asks, and the others laugh even louder.

_Doctor_, they call me- it's their own little joke.

Without warning, Benson stops and uses his key ring to unlock the door in front of us. As soon as he opens it he pushes me inside and slams the door shut behind me, the lock clicking in place immediately.

"Someone will come for you shortly," he tells me- as if I didn't know- and then leaves, the sound of his heavy shoes disappearing as he gets further and further down the hall.

And then, there's silence, save for the lunatic ramblings of the women around me.

"Doctor, doctor, give me the news," one of the women begins to sing. "We've got a bad case of loathing you!"

Laughter closes in on me.

"Harley and Joker sitting in a tree," another patient sings- her voice shrill and high. "F-U-C-K-I-N-G."

This gets a rise out of the other women and they laugh and shriek in amusement.

I slide down the grimy wall into a sitting position and shut my eyes against the noise.

"Come on, doc," the woman who first addressed me speaks again. "Tell us, was he hung like a horse?"

His voice urges me- for no one else to hear- _Go ahead, Quinn, rile 'em up._

I don't say anything though.

"We all know you two were doing the dirty during your sessions," the same woman says, her voice carrying across the ward. Where are the attendants? Why don't they shut her and the rest of her catcalling fiends up? "Indulge us."  
_  
Come on, kid._

No.

"Just tell us the truth," she says. "It's not like we don't know you two were screwing- we all know that's why you went nuts."

"I didn't know insanity was communicable," I reply.

He laughs in the recesses of my mind.

The women shriek in delight.

_Give 'em more! Give 'em more!_

"Did you two screw on the therapy couch?" another woman asks.

"What happens between Mr. J and I behind closed doors is none of your business," I say, and my reply is met with boos and other sounds of dissent. "But," I continue, and they quiet down. "If we _had been_ together, there was very little _joking_ going on."

This is met with hoots and howls and general chaos by the ladies of the ward.

In my head, he says, _That's my girl_, and so I don't hear anything else.


	2. Daddy Complex

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter One  
Daddy Complex**

My alarm clock blared into life at eight o'clock on the first Sunday of April. Blearily, I fumbled for the off button and rolled onto my back, eyes still closed as I considered going back to sleep. In the next room my younger brother, Barry, hit the wall with his fist, saying, "Can't you spare us one Sunday, Harley?" but I didn't respond. His words were enough to remind me of my commitment though, so I threw back the covers and got out of bed.

Outside it was cold and wet, a fine drizzle falling from a sky of opaque gray. Inside, it was almost just as cold, making me wonder if Mom had been able to pay the bill that month. After quickly making my bed I kicked at the radiator in my room, sighing in relief as it was sent hissing into life. Moving over to my dresser, I retrieved a pair of jeans and a black sweater from the middle drawer before I left my frigid room for the bathroom.

Everyone continued to sleep as I took a quick, hot shower, dried my hair, and pulled on my warm clothes. And I crept past my brother's and my mom's bedroom doors on my way downstairs, sure I hadn't woken them up. Until I entered the kitchen. Because leaning against the counter in her robe with a mug of coffee was my mother, looking out the window up until the point I set foot on the linoleum floor.

"Mom," I said. "I didn't know you were up."

She managed a flicker of a smile as I walked over and retrieved a thermos from the cabinets and poured some of the already made coffee into it. As I went to add some sugar to it, she said, "Your alarm woke me up."

"Sorry," I said, taking a small sip, gearing myself up for the conversation I knew we were about to have.

When she didn't say anything right away I moved across the kitchen and retrieved a bagel from the bread bin. It wasn't until I was sawing it in half that she finally said, "Why do you do it, Harley?"

"Do what?" I asked, playing dumb.

"Visit him," she replied.

I shrugged, avoiding her gaze and retrieving cream cheese and jelly from the refrigerator. "He's my father," I said in return, without any hint of annoyance or pleading.

"He ruined us," she said, her voice soft and hurt in the dim light of the chilly kitchen. "He ruined _himself_ and took us down with him."

I didn't say anything to this, just spread some cream cheese and jelly on my bagel. We had had this conversation once a month since my freshmen year of college- it wasn't anything special.

"Harley," she barked.

Pausing in my task, I said, "What, Mom? What do you want me to say?" I finished with the jelly and then put the knife in the sink, saying, "Just because you hate him doesn't mean I have to."

"That's not-"

"No? That's not what you've been trying to do since I was _fifteen_?" I counter.

Her shoulders sagged but the line of her mouth was tight and angry. Turning away from her, I put the two halves of my bagel back together without meeting her eyes.

"Do you have to go alone at least?" she asked as I left the kitchen with my breakfast in hand.

I kept moving as I called back, "It's not like any of you are going to come with me."

And I was out of the house with my jacket and shoes in under two minutes.

* * *

The guards at Stonegate knew me well. So well, that when I arrived there that Sunday morning they only glanced in my bag before sending me through the metal detectors- didn't even check inside the box I brought along with me, just like every other Sunday since my first year at Gotham University. A familiar guard, Lionel, took me up to the day room and led me straight to Dad's and my favorite table- next to the big window that overlooked the river.

"How you doing, kid?" Lionel asked me when we were beside the window.

I shrugged. "I'm good. How are you? How's Kylie?"

He rolled his eyes, smiling. "A monster. Really- the most terrible toddler you'd ever meet."

"Sure," I joked. "I'm sure she's _awful_."

"Awful, but great," he replied. After a beat he patted my shoulder and said, "Your dad'll be down in a minute. You take care of yourself, kid."

I smiled, "Thanks, Lionel," and watched him leave the day room.

When I was alone I placed my bag and the box on the table, took off my jacket and sat down. From the window I could see across the river, to the buildings and streets that looked gray in the steadily falling drizzle. I still felt chilly, and my hair was damp from the rain, but the day room was stifling and quickly warming me up. As I sat and waited for my dad I considered the other people seated around me- men in orange jumpsuits and the street-clothed innocents coming to visit them- and I was suddenly breaking out in a sweat underneath my sweater.

"There's my Harley girl!"

Turning around I saw my dad being escorted through the doorway. I winced at the sight of him in orange- something I have yet to get used to- but smiled and stood up as he came over to me. He was beaming as he wrapped me up in his arms, and I buried my face into the rough material of his jumpsuit, my heart inexplicably thumping against my ribcage- just like every other time I'd seen him since the arrest.

"I missed you," I said, as he smoothed my hair back.

"I know," he replied, his voice deep and rumbling through his chest. "I miss you everyday, sweetie."

When he let me go and moved to sit down at the table across from me I sat down as well. Motioning to the bakery box in front of me, I said, "I brought you cookies from Blumenthal's."

"My hero!" he said, as if I hadn't brought the same cookies the previous Sunday- or every Sunday for the past six years.

We started in on the cookies right away, crunching on the M&Ms and swiping away any leftover crumbs.

After a minute, Dad asked, "How's your mom?"

I rolled my eyes and broke a piece off of my cookie. "A bitch," I said, before popping the cookie piece into my mouth.

"I don't suppose she's going to visit or call-"

"No."

There was another moment of silence where we chewed, before Dad started again. "And Barry?"

"He's good," I replied.

"Has he given up on being a rockstar?"

I shook my head and laughed a little, saying, "No- God help us. He's even stopped going to school to focus on his 'career.'"

"That sonofabitch," Dad cursed. "I'd love to shake some sense into that boy's head."

Barry had been eleven when our dad was arrested- he was just a figment in his mind now, a phantom that had broken our family and our lives, leaving us in near poverty with a stressed-out, angry mother. To Barry, Dad was the bad guy- and not a cool enough one for him to appreciate.

No longer hungry- my heart still rocketing around in my chest- I put my half-eaten cookie back into the box with the rest.

"I start my internship at Arkham tomorrow," I told him.

"Really?" he asked through a mouthful of M&Ms and cookie. "That's great!"

I shrugged. "I don't think they'll have me doing much right away, but I'm certified to counsel and I might be able to sit in on some major case studies."

"That's great, Harl," he replied, taking my hand in his free one, giving it a squeeze. "I'm so proud of you."

Lowering my eyes, I tried to ignore the fact that my heart was now in my throat and blinked away the tears that were suddenly burning my eyes- for no reason I was conscious of. Quickly taking my hand out of his, I balled it up in my lap and refused to meet his eyes. My stomach was crawling with a hollow feeling, threatening to spew bagel and jelly-cream mush at any moment. It wasn't a new feeling- this anxiety and sudden restlessness upon seeing my father- I had known it ever since I had started visiting him. And every week when I went to see him I expected it to be different, but it never was. There was something about sitting across from him in a prison day room, filling him in on a family that he was now detached from, talking about my life and receiving his verbal approval in return- it threw all those bad memories from when I was fifteen back into my face, made me stare right at all I had missed and was missing by not having my father outside of the Stonegate visiting room.

"What is it, Harleen?" he asked, his voice quiet. "What's the matter?"

I shook my head.

I was seeing my mother crying in the living room, with my dad reassuring her that everything would be okay. I saw him going to court and heard all those testimonies against him- people saying he had ruined their lives, had taken everything from them and their families. I remembered the bile rising in my throat as I watched my father- a man, I suddenly realized, that I didn't know at all- being cuffed and taken away. And I recall every single nasty remark all those kids said to me when I returned to school, the way our lives at home fell apart once Dad was gone. And it all made my heart throb in my ears.

"Harley?"

"I'm fine," I said, swiping at my eyes and swallowing hard against the ache in my throat.

Dad looked regretful and sad, glancing at the box full of cookies in front of us.

"How's- uh- Has your parole officer said anything?" I asked, focusing on breathing just as much as changing the subject.

It seemed as if he wanted to find out what was wrong with me, but instead he shook his head, saying, "She said I haven't been being productive enough for the judge to consider."

"What does she mean?" I demanded. "You're productive enough, aren't you?"

He shrugged, rubbing at his stubbly chin. "I guess not."

"Well, do more," I urged. "Go to meetings- offer to do chores- whatever you have to do so you can come home, Dad!"

"Why should I?" he returned. "Why should I have to appease these people any more than I already am?"

Just then I caught a glimpse- not of my father- but of the man who had conned so many people out of money, the man who those people claimed had ruined their lives.

Finding my voice I asked, "What does it matter as long it gets you out?"

"What's going to happen if I get out though?" he asked, his voice nearly begging. "You think I'll be able to get a job? You think anyone wants a conman under their employ? And where am I going to live? My family certainly isn't going to take me back."

This made me feel dizzy- this frank comment on the dissolution of our family, and his clear disregard for everything I had done for him- and I clammed up again.

Seeing my reaction- because my mouth was pressed shut and the shock was stamped all over my face- he seemed to realize himself and he said, "Not you, Harley- I didn't mean you."

I waved away his words. "It's fine," I said. "I get it."

He became quiet and watched my face for some sign that he should speak further, but I didn't give him one.

Instead, I was thinking about all I had ever said in defending him, all I had ever done to persuade my mother that he was decent, all the money I had spent on cookies from Blumenthal's.

"I have to go," I said suddenly, standing. He stood as well and I hugged him quickly. "I'll see you next week, Dad, okay?"

"O-Okay," he replied, just as I was releasing him. "I love you, Harley."

"I love you too," I said, not looking at him as I put on my jacket.

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but didn't know what could possibly make things better between us. I, however, knew that no words would make the racing of my heart slow down or the trembling in my hands lessen.

"Enjoy the cookies," I told him with a smile, before grabbing my bag, kissing him quickly on the cheek, and leaving the day room.

I found my way to the visitors' bathroom in under thirty seconds and, when I was sure I was alone, threw up my bagel and half a cookie, feeling worse and worse as the seconds ticked by.

And when I returned home and my mother tried to neutrally ask how the visit had gone I managed to only glare at her once before going upstairs and disappearing into my room.


	3. Arkham

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Two**  
**Arkham**

When I got to Arkham Asylum the following afternoon I was much too nervous about starting my internship to think about my dad. Instead, my head was wrapped solely around psychology and psychiatry, and following the rules of the asylum. I was confident that everything would be great though. I had always done well in all of my classes, was an expert in all things psychological at Gotham University, and I was ready for whatever Arkham could throw my way. If they wanted me to analyze a top serial killer and find out where he hid his last victim, then I would. If they asked me to be Batman's personal therapist I would. If they even asked me to just sit in on a group therapy session of moody criminals and take notes then I would. I was ready and willing. So it was with confidence that I showed my I.D. badge to the man at the front desk and, after he deemed me legitimate, strode up the stairs until I had reached the second floor.

Having been shown the way just the week before, I walked down the hall and found Dr. Joan Leland's office and knocked.

"Come in," I heard her call, and I did as I was told.

Dr. Leland was a friend of one of my professors at Gotham School of Medicine, and she was the one who had gotten me my internship at Arkham. She was a successful and beautiful woman in her late thirties, a doctor of psychiatry, an author of several psychiatric books, and my supervisor at Arkham. When I entered her office she was sitting at her desk with a couple of folders open in front of her, looking just right in her setting.

"Harleen. Right on time," she said, and then she looked up and paused. "You look so professional," she added.

Though she hadn't meant for her words to hurt me, I suddenly felt like a dilettante. Dressed in my gray skirt and white button up, with my hair in a bun- I had even put my glasses on instead of wearing my contacts- I felt as if I was playing dress-up. Unlike Dr. Leland I didn't feel as if I belonged there- although I desperately wanted to.

Closing up the folders in front of her, she asked, "Are you ready for today?"

"Yes," I replied confidently, watching her stand up and walk over to me from behind her desk. "I've been looking forward to getting started."

"Good," she replied, steering me out of the office. "I'm glad to hear it."

We walked down the hallway and went to an old elevator. Dr. Leland pressed the button for the topmost floor and I felt a thrill of excitement zip up my spine as the doors closed and we started moving up.

"As I told you last week you'll be working for me on the top floor men's ward," she explained over the hum of the lift. "I know you've been well-educated, and I don't want to underestimate you, but- you _are_ sure about this, Harleen? I mean, these men are _criminally_ insane- the 'worst of the worst' as it were."

I nodded, trying not to flinch under her probing gaze. "I'm ready."

"Good, because these boys could eat an intern like you for breakfast," Dr. Leland said. "And I'm only half kidding."

I tried to keep myself confident and unbothered, but it was difficult.

The doors opened onto another hallway and before getting out, Dr. Leland said, "Come on, I'll introduce you to Arkham's finest."

* * *

At the end of the hallway there was a pair of locked doors with bars on the windows. In order to get inside you had to press a buzzer for a nurse to come unlock the door. Once we were on the ward though, Dr. Leland had the right to walk around liberally. And after thanking the nurse she led me forward, past the nurses' station, and into a large, high-ceilinged room. There were chairs and couches set up in various arrangements around the room, one group circled around an old TV set. There were a few card tables set up as well, as well as end tables set up with piles of old magazines and newspapers. And situated around the room solitarily and in groups, were more than a dozen men in red jumpsuits.

Upon our entrance the majority of the men looked over. One man with stringy, greasy hair ogled me and made rude gestures with his tongue. Another man bared his teeth at us from across the room. One man, however, came loping over to us.

"Don't even think about it, Chester," Dr. Leland said to him, her voice stern but also friendly and joking in a way.

The man stared at us for a moment more before turning on his heel and walking over to a couch where he sat down and continued to watch.

"Let me introduce you- once they know who you are most of them will lose interest," Dr. Leland whispered to me. More loudly, she called everyone to attention, saying, "Boys! Everyone! I'd like for all of you to meet Harleen. She's going to be my intern for awhile and you'll be seeing a lot of her. I'm sure you'll all get to know her in no time."

One of the men sent out a high-pitched laugh.

Dr. Leland ignored him and continued, saying, "I expect all of you to treat Harleen even better than you'd treat our normal staff since she is a guest here." She swept the room with a stern glance before adding, "And if I hear that anyone's pulling their little tricks or acting inappropriately around her I will see to it that you receive the proper punishments."

The same man laughed, and another one catcalled, sending a good handful of them into fits of laughter.

"Glad to see you're all so cooperative," Dr. Leland joked.

After a beat she steered me through the day room and into an adjoining hall, and I was extremely grateful to get away from the men. Their presence- the way they stared at me and the way it seemed as if any sudden move could send their deck of cards falling- made me nervous. I thought I had been ready for Arkham- hadn't this been what I signed up for?- but it was already proving to be tougher than I thought. And the jumpsuits reminded me sickeningly of Dad's own prison attire.

"Those guys you just saw are this ward's best behaved patients," Dr. Leland said as we continued walking, and my jaw dropped a little. "I know," she smiled, commiserating with me, "but they are well enough to be in the day room."

I tried to wrap my head around this, and suddenly- with a sticking in my throat- I wondered what the patients who behaved _badly_ were like.

"These are their rooms," Dr. Leland was saying, gesturing to the doors that lined the hall. "There's either two or four men to a room, and they're always locked during the day." She continued walking and then pointed to two doors at the end of the hallway that had little windows in them. "Those are the seclusion rooms which are unlocked unless someone is inside."

Nodding, I absorbed these concrete facts, pleased that there was something I could be sure of.

At the end of the hallway we reached a large, heavy-looking door with one small, barred window at the top of it.

"This, however, is where Arkham's worst cases are," she said, her face suddenly darker and serious as she took a key from the bunch on her lanyard. As she unlocked the door, she said, "These boys are under our tightest security possible."

Shaking slightly, I followed her through the door after she unlocked it and then waited with her in the little space between the first door and the next. The little antechamber was gray- instead of the rest of the ward's white- and it was cold and dark. Dr. Leland punched in a code into a keypad on the door, and then when a buzzer sounded, the door gave a loud unlatching sound, and then began to slowly slide open. It scraped and grated as it did this, and I looked eagerly as it revealed what lay ahead, bit by bit.

From where I stood I could only see a barred doorway and two security guards, but Dr. Leland brought me through the doors- which grated closed behind us- and up to the bars.

"Good afternoon, doctor," one of the guards said.

"Hi, Tom," she replied with a smile. "This is my intern, Harley- I'm just showing her around."

The guard nodded and Dr. Leland presented her I.D. badge to him. Then, he looked to me.

"He needs to see your I.D. as well," Dr. Leland explained, and I quickly pulled my badge out of my pocket and showed it to him.

When he was sure we were both allowed behind the bars he unlocked the door and let us through.

Before us stretched a long, dimly lit hallway. It seemed like a completely different building then the rest of the ward. This corridor was all gray cinderblock and black bars, not hospital white with colors thrown throughout. The fluorescents overhead were flickering and dying, and there were no pleasantries such as magazines or potted plants. A chill crept up every inch of my skin as we began walking down the hallway, and excitement made my heart thrum in my chest. This was what I was studying so hard for, this was what I was working my ass off to get to- high security criminals behind layers and layers of barricades and locks. This made me far more comfortable than semi-behaved criminals in a dayroom. This made me want to smile, though I refrained.

Dr. Leland led me forward and said, "These patients are housed in separate, maximum security cells with viewing windows. They have their own beds and toilets and sinks within, but nothing that they could use to wound themselves or someone else, and nothing that they could use to damage the property too badly."

I was itching to run ahead and check out every single cell from the hallway, but I remained at my supervisor's side.

"Our patients here include severely insane criminals, serial killers, extreme personalities- very dangerous men," Dr. Leland explained, pausing as we reached their first cell. "You'll learn about each patient as you work here."

Through the viewing window I could see a small, gray room with a single bed and a bathroom area. Inside there was a man writing all over the walls with a crayon. The next window revealed a man with only tufts of hair sticking up out of his head- the rest having been razored away- and he was sitting on his bed, staring back at us through the window. The men I saw through the plate glass grew stranger and stranger, until I was nearly salivating at the chance to see their records, to read the notes on them, get inside their brains, get my hands dirty with psychosis.

"Harleen," Dr. Leland said, having caught the exuberant, wide-eyed expression on my face. "What you learn and experience here is not to leave Arkham. It's for your education only."

I turned to her and nodded. "I understand."

"I don't want you- ten years from now- writing some tell-all book, thinking you can cash in on my patients," she explained, her voice stern and proprietary.

The sudden turn in her demeanor made me pause, and I sobered up, saying, "I would- I wouldn't."

"They may seem glamorous from where you're standing, but I've been doing this for fifteen years, and it's messy," she continued.

_That's what I love,_ I wanted to explain to her. _I want messy- Give me your messiest- As long as it's someone else's life that's a mess I love it!_

Instead, I just nodded once more, and followed her back out of the ward.

"So what's my first job going to be then?" I asked, once we had reentered the white ward.

"Today you're going to be doing some filing for me!" Dr. Leland said brightly.  
_  
What?_ I almost blurted.

But she wasn't kidding.


	4. High Profile

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Three  
High Profile**

My first month at Arkham dragged by at a torturous pace. Here I had been thinking I was going to be helping analyze criminals, sitting in on sessions, and learning the twisted thought processes of the deeply psychotic. But Dr. Leland had me doing the most menial things- filing, collecting laundry, escorting patients to and from various psychiatrists with two guards at my side, sorting mail, typing out various notes, etc.- and it was absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I was a grad student, not a secretary or a janitor, yet I was being treated as if I were an uneducated nobody.

So, it was with indignation and stubbornness that I went to Dr. Leland's office several weeks after starting my internship. I had just finished my graduate classes at Gotham School of Medicine and was due to start my hours at the hospital for the day, but instead of going to Dr. Leland's office to check in and get my tasks for the day, I was going to defend my case.

"Harley," she said, as soon as I had walked through the door. "I'm glad you're here. I need you to bring this downstairs to Dr. Katz and tell him it needs to be faxed medic-"

"Dr. Leland, I was wondering if I could discuss something with you," I interrupted.

Dr. Leland heard the seriousness in my voice- the determination- and the abrupt way I had cut her off, and she settled forward, folding her hands on her desk. "Is there a problem, Harley? Something wrong?"

"It's just-" I began, feeling young and inexperienced under this mature doctor's dark eyes. "I feel- I feel like I could do so much more here than the tasks I'm being given. I mean, I'm not trying to undermine your authority, Dr. Leland, but all I've done so far is escort patients and file and clean and-"

"Harley," Dr. Leland cut me off, sounding not unkind, but maybe a little incredulous at my words. "What did you think you would be doing here?"

This made me pause, before I said, "I don't know. I thought I might- you know- work with the patients more. Maybe speak with some of them, sit in on sessions, help analyze some."

By the look on Dr. Leland's face, I could tell that this was strictly out of the question.

"Harley, Arkham is a very secure facility, and you're working on a high-security ward," she explained. "You need to earn the kind of privilege you're looking for."

This made me frown, my shoulders slumping. How long did I have to do laundry at Arkham for her to think I had earned the right to talk to an insane criminal?

"Besides, you're only two years into grad school. In order to have your own patients here or work the way you'd like to, you need to have at least four years under you belt," she said, looking reasonable, if not stern.

Her words gave me a flash of anger so violent that I wanted to hurtle something out of her unbarred window. I had had all these visions of working closely with the criminally insane- getting inside their minds and untangling the mess of their thoughts- but Dr. Leland was only going to let me work closely with their jumpsuits in the basement utility room until I had two more years at Gotham School of Medicine. And the fact that she hadn't explained this to me before I took on the internship made me explicitly frustrated. I felt like I had been led on- felt like I had been lied to- and I wanted to wring her slender, brown neck.

"You'll get there," she told me. "Just not today."  
_  
Fuck you_, I thought, with another flash of malice that even left me surprised.

"Now, I need you to take this to Dr. Katz," she said, handing me a piece of paper. "Tell him it needs to be faxed to Hudson Medicare as soon as he's looked it over, okay?"

I nodded and turned from her, leaving the room.

As I walked down the hall toward the stairs, I tried not to let my disappointment and anger get the best of me but it was just- I mean, I had worked my ass off in high school to get a scholarship to Gotham University, and then I worked my ass off even harder there to be top of my class and graduate with honors and a degree in psychology. And now, with two years of perfect graduate work, I wasn't good enough to even _chat_ with one of Arkham's bad boys. It made me want to spit in someone's face- specifically, Dr. Leland's- and screw it all. Instead, I ascended the stairs and continued on my route as Joan Leland's secretary.

I was almost to Dr. Katz's office when I glanced over the sheet in my hand. It was some kind of patient profile, with notes scribbled on it by Dr. Leland. Without feeling any kind of remorse at all, I read the profile in its entirety:

_Patient Name: Pamela Lillian Isley (alias, Poison Ivy)_

_Date of Arrival: April 25_

_Diagnosis: Psychosis (symptoms of grandiosity, hostility, paranoia, obsession, control)_

_Physical Health: abnormal, due to poisoning (see attached file)_

_Treatment: Long-term stay on Arkham's F. Locked Ward. Medication: Zelqua, 80 mg. Biweekly sessions with Dr. Katz._

_Notes: Patient was brought in for evaluation after being arrested by authorities. After attempting to threaten the city by 'releasing her suffocating spores' she was subdued by vigilante, Batman, and taken into custody. Patient's ability to release such spores is still under question, as she does seem to have a degree of poison in her blood stream from past experiences (see attached file).  
_  
Under this profile, Dr. Leland had written out a paragraph:

_Seems Pamela is suffering from some kind of trauma- from said experiment gone wrong? From the notes you sent me before I think she'll definitely need a moderate-heavy dosage of Zelqua, as well as regularly scheduled sessions. I'd be interested to know more about this Dr. Woodrue who performed the experiment- where did he come from? where did he go? etc. Also, because of this poison problem she'll have to be kept in high security, even if she seems to be cooperating, for fear that she'll injure the staff. Be happy to sit down and talk with her if you think she'll speak to a woman. Also, don't see anything wrong with her keeping the plants- even in the ceramic pots._

All of this left me absolutely floored.

Of course I had heard about 'Poison Ivy' and her threat to poison the city on the news, but everyone had just assumed she was a psycho. I mean, poisonous spores? And then Batman got her and she was gone. I didn't know she was taken to Arkham, though that should have been obvious if she's a criminal, and insane.

Suddenly, I wanted to meet this person- what could be a more extreme personality than a woman who thought of herself as a kind of plant villain? But if I couldn't talk to the patients on my own ward, I knew I wouldn't be able to talk to Poison Ivy.

Unless of course Dr. Leland didn't know I was going to talk to her.

* * *

"Bon Jovi or Queen frontman?"

I considered my brother from my bed for a moment, before asking, "Is that a serious question?"

"Come on, Harl," he whined. "I have an interview with a club owner and I need to look the part!"

"Fine, Bon Jovi," I replied, going back to the thesis I was working on.

He stomped out of my room, saying, "I want to look like Queen!"

Downstairs, I heard the front door slam shut and Mom call, "Hello?"

"Hi, Mom!" I called. "Your son's trying to look like a queen!"

"Shut up, Harley!" Barry barked from his room next door.

I laughed to myself and scribbled away on my notebook.

After a minute there was a knock at my door frame and I looked up to see Mom standing there in her uniform for one of her two jobs- since it was after twelve, she had just returned from waitressing at the diner and was still in her diner frock and apron.

"Hey," she said. "How was the hospital?"

I dropped my pencil onto my bed and said, "It was okay," thinking of Dr. Leland and her failing to give me something substantial to do. "Do you remember Poison Ivy? The plant lady that was on the news?"

"Yeah," Mom replied, looking skeptical about this.

"She's at Arkham! I just found out today!"

This didn't look like it pleased my mother. "Well, I guess it's good that she's locked up, right? She was certainly crazy."

"Yeah, but Mom, she's got like actual poison in her bloodstream- from some freak accident she was in or something!" I told her, gushing about this woman I had never even seen in person.

"Oh God, that's weird," my mom said. "Make sure you don't go near her."

I rolled my eyes. "That's not the point! Think of how screwed up you have to be to relate yourself to a _plant_- to try to poison people with _spores_!"

"Yeah," she replied, looking none too impressed. In fact, she looked kind of sickened by the whole thing. "You'd definitely have to be very 'screwed up.'"

"Mom, we already know that Harley's a psycho mess," Barry said, joining my mom in the doorway. "But you don't need to say it to her face."

I was about to make another queen comment, but then I saw that my younger brother had black lines ringed around his eyes in an obviously failed attempt at some kind of rock and roll eyeliner. Without a word, my mom and I burst out laughing.

"Barry, what _is_ that?" Mom asked.

"What?" he countered. "It's my look."

"You look like a raccoon!" I managed to choke out through giggles.

He gave me a dirty look.

"Come on, honey," Mom said, steering him out of the room. "I'll teach you how to do your make-up like a proper woman."

As she left with him she made a face at me over her shoulder and I laughed some more.

But once the giggles had subsided and the house was quiet, I tried to focus on my notes again. However, my thoughts, as always, turned to Arkham, and it was hard for me to turn them away.


	5. Poison Ivy

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Four  
Poison Ivy**

As it turned out, Dr. Leland aided in my meeting Poison Ivy. One afternoon- only a few days after I had tried to get a better job from her- she sent me downstairs to give Dr. Katz another sheet, this one to be faxed to Dr. Arkham. She told me that Dr. Katz needed to add notes to the form and then send it on to the head of the hospital, and that it was very urgent. So, I went down to Dr. Katz's office, but his secretary told me he was on the women's locked ward, about to go into a session. When I told her I was Dr. Leland's intern and that it was very urgent, she told me to go up there and I'd find him. So, with the plain permission of a true Arkham employee, I made my way upstairs, to the women's locked ward.

Their ward was much the same as the men's. I needed to be let in by a nurse, who- after I had explained Dr. Leland's commands- led me through their white ward and to the gates of their high security hall of gray.

I found Dr. Katz more than halfway down the dark corridor, far enough that the guards at the front couldn't hear him. He was sitting in a plain, metal chair, with a folder resting on his lap, pen poised above it. When I glanced toward the plate glass window- to see who he was in a session with- I was surprised to see Poison Ivy. She was dressed in a red Arkham jumpsuit, her hair wild and red around her beautiful, pale face. In her cell, potted plants were lined up along the wall, and she sat beside them, fingering the leaves of a small tree.

"Harleen," Dr. Katz said, surprised, when he saw me approaching.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your session, Dr. Katz, but Dr. Leland said it was urgent that you read and add notes to this form, and then fax it to Dr. Arkham," I explained, handing the sheet to him.

When he had a moment to glance over the sheet, he jumped up, and said "I forgot about this!" Turning to the window, he said, "Pamela, I'll be right back." To me, he said, "Don't move, I'll only be a minute- I have something for you to give to Dr. Leland in return." Then he was rushing off down the hallway, disappearing behind the bars of the ward.

Then it was only Poison Ivy and me. I didn't want to stare at her or start a conversation in case that wasn't what she wanted, so I shuffled around a bit, looking at the dusty, gray cinderblocks along the ceiling.

"What do you suppose all their important business is?"

Turning, I was surprised to see that Poison Ivy was staring at me, waiting for a reply.

I shrugged. "I don't know. You know important hospital business," I joked, trying to sound pompous and ridiculous. "Much too important for _us_ to know the details of."

This made her laugh a little, and it seemed like that surprised her- like she hadn't expected me to be funny or nice.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Harley, a plebeian intern."

She regarded me through the plate glass. Then, with a silky smooth voice, she said, "Sit down."

I did as she said, and sat down in the chair Dr. Katz had vacated.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked.

"You're Poison Ivy," I replied, unsure. "You were on the news."

This made her smile, and she said, "Oh God, I was? How did I look?"

Shaking my head, baffled by this turn of events, I said, "Good?"

"I'm famous!" she said, bouncing around a little. "Do you believe that shit? Ha! I'm fucking _famous_!"

Part of me wanted to point out that she was famous for being the crazy plant lady, but I held my tongue. Even if she was crazy and locked behind plate glass and iron, she was nicer than any girls I had ever come across in high school or college. She hadn't made one comment about me being a loser, or my father being in jail, and I already appreciated her immensely for it- even if it was because she didn't know me.

"Why did you do it?" I found myself asking- not so much as a psychologist, but as a person.

She studied me for a moment, and then when she noticed the genuine curiosity in my eyes, she said, "I needed the money."

"The ransom?"

"Yeah," she said. "If I want to do what I love in life I need the cash to do it."

"And what's that?" I wondered.

"Botany," she replied, glancing lovingly at her plants. "It's all I care about."

"Yeah, but why can't you get money the normal way?" I asked, thinking of my dad conning people. "Work up to it and then do what you love?"

She shook her head, red hair splashing across her vivid green eyes. "Because I've been fucked over and fucked up and there's just shit I don't want to deal with."

"What do you mean?"

Scooting closer to the glass, Poison Ivy said, "Have you ever been in love?"

This took me off guard, and I shook my head.

"Then you wouldn't understand," she said, sitting back on her heels and shaking her head.

"Why not?" I countered indignantly. "I have an imagination- it's not entirely a foreign concept-"

She shook her head, laughing at me bitingly. "It is if you haven't really felt it. The kind of love that drives you crazy- the kind that makes you do crazy things without caring." When I only blinked at her, she smirked. "You're nice, missy, but you wouldn't get it."

"You were screwed over by the guy you love," I guessed. "That's not that hard to _get_."

She looked angry- as if she was going to lash out with a sling of curses to punish me- but I spoke up before she could.

"I've been screwed over by someone I love," I told her, desperate for someone to understand that I could relate- that I wasn't as completely naive as everyone thought I was. "By my dad. And if you ask me, that's worse than being betrayed by a _boyfriend_."

Poison Ivy's eyes flashed and she said, "You couldn't imagine."

"I can imagine a lot more than you think," I spat maliciously, sick and tired of being underestimated, thinking of all the shit I had gone through after my dad had gone to jail, pissed that this woman was telling me it wasn't good enough for me to understand her pain.

I got up- about to leave- when I heard Dr. Katz pass through the gate and hurry back over to us.

"Here you are, Harleen," he announced, slightly out of breath, handing a folder. "Thank you for waiting. Please give this to Dr. Leland and tell her it's from Colombia-Presbyterian."

I managed to say, "Okay," without gritting my teeth too much, and turned away from the villain behind the glass and the doctor, stomping away down the hallway.

Bitch.

* * *

Not long after my talk with Poison Ivy, a new villain had cropped up in Gotham City, directly targeting the crime-fighting Batman. Over the course of- really- no time at all, he had killed several city officials and important persons in the criminal justice system, had the city's D.A.- Harvey Dent- reveal himself as Batman, participated in a high-speed chase, and threatened to kill other numerous people, before finally getting arrested. Everyone was talking about him everywhere. Who he was, where he came from, what his punishment would be, etc.. I watched the news in fascination, viewing clips the villain himself had filmed and catching snippets of his plans and how they had unfolded.

It was clear that he was deeply deranged- not only did he talk of chaos and disorder and corruption in such a psychotic way, but he wore a purple suit, had his face painted white, his lips red, and his hair dyed green, like a clown. There was something so strange and deeply wrong with him that I wished he could be at Arkham just so I could catch a glimpse into his neurosis.

But I didn't know what _would_ happen to him- if he would be taken to Stonegate, or pronounced insane and sent to Arkham, or if the judge would transport him elsewhere. All I did know was that he was a puzzle I would have loved to riddle out.

And the strangest- and probably funniest part of it all- was that he called himself the Joker.


	6. Black Out

**Author's Note:** Bear with me while we get through the events of _The Dark Knight_. The Joker will follow.

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Five**  
**Black Out**

Everyone thought order would return once the Joker was caught, but he turned us on our heads once more. Just like that, Harvey Dent was in the hospital and the Assistant District Attorney, Rachel Dawes, was dead. And where was the Joker? No longer in prison, it turned out, he had wreaked havoc on the building and gotten away. And, as it also turned out, Dent wasn't Batman. So, the city went into a panic. Where would the supervillain strike next? Who else would have to die- how much more destruction would we have to endure- before he stopped, before he was stopped? Would jailing him do enough? Or would he have to die? Gotham didn't care, as long as there was a stop put to the Joker's descending madness.

No one knew, however, that it was about to get worse.

I was at Arkham when Coleman Reese, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, was being interviewed on national television. Apparently he knew who Batman really was and was prepared to give his identity to the masses. Because all of the boys at Arkham- particularly on its locked ward- were so obsessed with all things hero and villain- particularly insane villain- the majority of them were situated around the television in the day room, watching with rapt attention, eager to find out who the hero was along with the rest of the nation.

From where I was watering the plants around the nurses' station for Dr. Leland, I caught glimpses of the show, waiting- much like everyone else- to find out who Batman was.

However curious I was though, I was focusing more on the plants I was taking care of- that is, until I heard a voice that froze me in my tracks.

"I had a vision... of a world _without_ Batman..."

Looking up from the plants, I saw the look of shock on Coleman Reese's face on the screen, as the Joker's twisted voice filtered through the speakers.

"The mob ground out a little profit and the police tried to shut them down one block at a time," he was saying, the camera cutting from Coleman to the interviewer and back again. Everyone in the Arkham dayroom was dead silent- even the nurses were staring, caught by the voice of Gotham's latest terrorist. "And it was so _boring_."

The room grew even more tense.

"I've had a change of heart," said the Joker, and his voice gave me the chills. "I don't want Mr. Reese spoiling everything, but why should I have all the fun?"

Coleman Reese looked absolutely sick and terrified on the screen.

"Let's give someone else a chance," the Joker said. "If Coleman Reese isn't dead in sixty minutes, then I blow up a hospital."

A ripple of dissent passed over the dayroom, and the nurses began twittering nervously, converging together in an anxious knot. The men didn't say a word though, they just continued to stare at the TV set. But the newscaster was pulling his earpiece from his ear, getting up from his desk, and hurrying off screen. Coleman Reese was pulled up out of his seat and ushered out of the camera's view. And the screen filled with a rainbow of stripes, blaring with a dead signal.

"Does that include Arkham?" one of the men asked, and the rest of the dayroom slid into a panic.

Patients were up and running toward the locked ward door- toward the barred windows. The nurses and attendants were trying to settle them down, while others were calling for assistance and information. I, however, stood by near the plants, frozen with my plastic watering can in hand.

I was sure that the chances of the Joker blowing up Arkham were pretty good. Weren't these his kind of people? Couldn't he blow it all up and take the survivors into some kind of psychotic army? The thought made my stomach drop- made the watering can particularly heavy in my hand. I wanted out. I wanted to get out of there at that moment and go home- wanted to make sure my mom and my brother were all right. And my dad. Would the Joker go after Stonegate to supplement his army even more? Would he take my dad? Suddenly, I was sure I was going to vomit, and the panic was pulsing vibrantly behind my eyes.

When the loud buzz of the ward door being unlocked sounded to life, I jumped. Looking over, though, I saw that it was Dr. Leland rushing onto the ward, looking- for the first time since I had known her- harried and nervous. Alongside her, she had five of the other psychiatrists who worked with the men on the ward.

"Everyone! Your attention, please- Everyone!"

The men quieted down for the most part, while the nurses jumped to immediate attention. In the background, the TV had gone back to the news, though it was repeating what the Joker had said and bringing 'up to the minute' updates on what was going on in Gotham. From the coverage, it looked like the entire city was losing it.

"We've heard all about the Joker's threat," one of the male doctors- Dr. Wilcox- announced. "According to Dr. Arkham's orders, we are all going to remain calm and stay where we are unless we are otherwise notified by the police."

A murmur of general anxiety swept through the ward, and I squeezed the handle of the watering can.

Dr. Leland added, "Unless the Gotham police tell us otherwise, we are perfectly safe here. There is no need to panic."

"We'll keep you updated," another doctor said, and they all turned to leave.

Rushing forward, I called, "Dr. Leland!"

She turned and saw me, stopping where she was.

"I was just wondering if I could go- I mean, my mom and my brother-"

"Harley," she said sternly. "I understand you're scared right now, but I need you here. The boys are going to be worked up and I need you to help the nurses in keeping them under control for the next hour- until we see what happens."

The anxiety in my stomach was rising up to my throat.

"I assure you, Harleen, you're perfectly safe here," she told me, giving my arm a squeeze. "I'll keep you updated when I hear of anything else." And she left without another word.

I stood there for a moment, before turning and going around to the door of the empty nurses' station. Going inside, I set the watering can down on one of the empty desk surfaces and picked up the phone. Punching in our house number, I held my breath as it rang in my ear.

"Hello?"

It was Barry, and he sounded rattled.

"Barry! Barry, it's Harley. Are you okay?" I asked frantically.

"I'm okay. Mom just called me from work," he explained. "She said the Joker's gonna blow up a hospital."

I nodded against the phone. "Is mom okay?"

"Yeah, she said they were kinda under lockdown at the library," he told me. "She told me not to leave the house."

"Yeah, don't," I commanded. "I'm stuck at Arkham unless the police tell us we need to get out. When Mom calls again tell her that- I have to help out here and I can't call her."

He said, "S-Sure."

"And if we have to evacuate here or anything I'll get in touch with you as soon as I can, okay?"

"Okay."

Swallowing down the ever rising panic, I said, "I love you, Barry. Stay inside."

"I love you, Harl," he replied- his voice more sentimental than I had heard it since our dad went to prison. "Be safe."

"I will. Bye." And I hung up.

* * *

The police never made us evacuate, and the Joker blew up Gotham General right on time. According to the news- which hadn't been turned off since the Joker's announcement- there were people still missing out of all those that had been evacuated from the building. This included Gotham Tonight's Mike Engel, who the Joker took a video of and sent to GCN. In the video, the newscaster had Joker lips painted on, and he was shaking in terror as he read a prewritten announcement by the Joker.

"Come nightfall, the city is mine, and anybody left here plays by my rules," Engel read, with the Joker mumbling over his words.

It was like a second punch straight to the stomach. One blow followed quickly by another.

"If you don't want to be in the game, get out now."

* * *

As people were being evacuated from the city by the masses, everyone in Arkham stayed put. Dr. Arkham told us that we were just outside the city's boundaries- far enough away from the center of the city for the Joker to forget about us. I didn't think this was exactly true. How could an extreme psychotic who was hell-bent on sending the city into chaos, forget about the hospital full of criminals and lunatics? Regardless, the nurses, doctors, patients, and attendants all stayed where they were. But I desperately wanted to go home- was sure that nobody would miss me- to be with my brother, who was still home alone, and my mom, who was on lockdown at work. But Dr. Leland made it very clear that I was not permitted to abandon my post. I worked for her, she reminded me, and the Arkham staff needed as much help as they could get keeping everything under lock and key during this time of mayhem.

So, I stayed. I sat in the dayroom with the rest of the ward- even the men, who were all unusually quiet and behaved- and stared at the TV as news clip after news clip flashed before our eyes.

Time passed slowly and quickly. It seemed like it was taking forever for something to happen- for the world to be righted again- but in no time at all, the sky was darkening and tensions were running higher. The nurses on the locked ward in Arkham were nervous and restless, running back and forth to the phones, eyeing the men warily, muttering prayers under their breath. I watched them from where I sat on the side of the room, their anxieties increasing as night fell, and I found myself growing annoyed.

_Pull it together_, I nearly barked at them. _Get a fucking hold of yourselves!_

But I remained quiet.

"This just in to GCN," the anchor was suddenly saying, and I couldn't tear myself away from the nurses irritating me. "Apparently the engines of two ferries, one holding 30,000 civilians, and one holding inmates from Stonegate prison, have been stopped en route from Gotham City."

Upon hearing this, my eyes shot back to the screen and my heart began hammering in my chest.

_Inmates from Stonegate prison. Stopped en route from Gotham City._

"As of right now we have no evidence to believe that the Joker is involved," the anchor said, but I barely heard him.

As if there was any reason the Joker wouldn't be involved. Thirty-thousand civilians and a ferry full of prisoners. No longer than an hour or so after the supervillain said he was going to make the city a part of his game. Did they think it was a coincidence? How stupid could they _be_?

Shaking, I got up and stumbled into the outside hallway. Without really seeing where I was going, I made it to the payphone bank, inserted some change, and dialed my mother's cell phone with violently trembling hands.

"Hello?"

"Mom!" I rasped.

"Harley! Oh, Harley, thank God!"

My lip quivered as I tried to keep myself from crying, my throat straining from the effort. "Mom, have you seen the news?" I managed to choke out.

"No, what-"

"There's a ferry in the river- getting away from Gotham- with prisoners from Stonegate on it," I whispered, my eyes overflowing without warning. "I don't know if Dad-"

My mom cut me off. "Harley, don't worry about your father right now. Take care of yourself."

"But, Mom, what if something-"

"No," she said, trying to sound firm, and failing. "You make sure you take care of yourself tonight. That's all you need to worry about. Do you understand me?"

Shaking my head, I pressed my lips together. I didn't think it would be possible for me to not worry about my father, but I would try and listen to my mom. "Okay," I finally said. "I'll try."

"I love you, sweetie," she said, and a sob climbed its way up my throat from the tenderness in her voice. "No matter what, I love you."

I knew she meant "despite the fact that you still love your father and we have so many differences" but I didn't hold it against her.

"I love you too, Mom." I said, my voice cracking.

"Take care of yourself, okay?" she urged. "And I'll see you at home."

I nodded, trying to reassure myself. "Okay, bye," I replied, and then slowly hung up.

And I turned from the payphone bank, about to go back into the dayroom, but something stopped me.

_Deadly explosives,_ I heard. _Hostage situation._ And I backed up to the wall, slid down it, and blacked out on the floor.


	7. By Reason of Insanity

_Madness Becomes Her_

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Six  
By Reason of Insanity  
**

I didn't come to until later that night. Someone tried to shake me awake, but it was their scent that roused me from unconsciousness- a mix between some flowery perfume, baked goods, and hand sanitizer. Opening my eyes, I looked blearily ahead to realize that it was Norma, one of the older, night nurses. She was staring down at me with concern, and behind her the men were being ushered to their rooms for the night. I couldn't hear the TV in the dayroom anymore and I felt as if I had just woken from a horrific nightmare.

"What happened?" I asked, rubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands.

"You must've passed out," she said, helping me to stand up. "I don't blame you- Dr. Leland said you've been here all day-"

"No," I cut her off. "What happened? With the ferries? With the Joker?"

Realization dawned on her face. "They caught him- he's in custody now."

"And the ferries?"

"Everyone on the ferries is safe," she explained. "The prisoners are on their way back to Stonegate and the civilians are all unharmed."

I let out a tremendous sigh of relief and felt myself relax.

"Dr. Leland told me to call you a cab when I came up- she's stuck on the phone with Dr. Arkham and the police," she explained. "About keeping the Joker under maximum security until his trial, I expect."

Digesting this information- hadn't I hoped the Joker would end up at Arkham so I could glimpse his insanity?- I nodded.

"You think you're okay to take a cab by yourself?" Norma asked, eyeing me worriedly.

"I'm okay now," I told her. "I just need to get home."

She nodded, satisfied with this answer, and said, "Let me just call for a cab- you'll be out of here in no time."

As it turned out, the city was still shaky with panic, so it was a half hour before the cab arrived at Arkham, and another half hour before I even got home. And by the time I did I jumped out of the car, paid the driver with the money Dr. Leland had given me for staying at the hospital during a crisis, and flew up the front walkway to our house. Clumsily shoving the key in the lock, I threw the door open and shut it behind me, sliding the lock and the chain into place.

"Harley?"

Mom was running at me immediately, throwing her arms around me and pulling me to her, even though I still had my bag over my shoulder and my keys in hand.

"I was so worried!" she said, and she was crying. "I tried calling you but you didn't answer and I couldn't get through to the hospital and I didn't- I wasn't sure whether or not you were okay..."

Barry stood watching us in the doorway of the front hall, looking shell-shocked.

Nodding to her, trying to keep myself from crying at her hysteria, I clutched her and said, "I'm okay, Mom. I'm fine." Pulling away from her, I walked over to Barry. "You okay, kid?" I asked.

He managed a smile and nodded. "I'm good," he said, and I hugged him as well.

"I hope this is over for good," Mom said, herding us into the kitchen where she made us sit down and have some leftover lasagna. "If that man terrorizes the city anymore, I swear to God we're moving back to Brooklyn- nothing this horrible ever happened there."

I rolled my eyes good-naturedly as I sat down at the table. "I think he might end up at Arkham."

"What?" my mom demanded, spinning around and glaring at me in the middle of pulling the lasagna out of the refrigerator.

"I mean, it makes sense," I shrugged. "He's a criminal, and he's clearly insane, so-"

"He's _deranged_," she argued. "There's no chance of rehabilitation for that terrorist! Why bother putting him in Arkham- why not Alcatraz?"

Barry looked surprised by her outburst, but he didn't say anything, tensions were running high, we were all stressed and running on massive amounts of adrenaline.

"Mom," I said, trying to explain. "The guy might be bad but he still deserves a chance at getting help."

"Good riddance is what I say," she announced as she began dishing cold food onto three plates to heat up.

This bothered me- that she was signing this man off right away. I mean, sure, the Joker was psychotic and terrible, but that didn't make him any less deserving of a chance to get better. That was what I believed in. That was why I had wanted to go into psychology in the first place- to help the baddest of the bad to get better, to give them a chance to live normal, happy lives. And just like she had done with Dad- without any hope of a second chance- she was dismissing the Joker right away.

"We don't know where he'll end up anyway," I said, trying to keep my voice from rising in the defense of my intended profession. "It's up to the judge."

"Yeah, well, hopefully the judge has some sense," she said, putting the plates into the microwave.

_You mean like the one who put your husband away,_ I almost snapped, scaring myself for the second time in one day over the violence behind my thoughts. Of course, though, I remained silent.

* * *

The Joker was kept in a top security cell in Stonegate prison until his trial. The city was in an uproar over what would become of him- everybody voicing there opinion everywhere you went, Starbucks, the grocery store, on the bus, everywhere. Some believed he was so monstrous that he deserved the death penalty, while others believed he deserved to be locked up in Stonegate for the rest of his natural-born life. Of course, there were the remote few- like myself- that believed he was just really, really sick, and deserved the chance to get better. What side the judge would take though, would not be determined until the trial itself.

Prior to the court date, however, Dr. Arkham went over to Stonegate himself to evaluate the Joker. When he returned, it was with one definite conclusion:

"The Joker is absolutely insane."

I heard him talking to Dr. Leland and several of the other resident psychiatrists while I was filing outside the staffroom on the afternoon of the evaluation.

There was a thoughtful silence that followed the director's words.

"Insane enough for the judge to send him to Arkham?" Dr. Katz asked.

"It's difficult to say," Dr. Arkham replied, and I leaned closer to the door, around the corner of the filing cabinet outside, to hear. "While the execution of his terrorist plans required a great level of mental clarity- if not genius- there is no doubt in my mind that the lines in his brain have become too blurred for him to have done anything else."

After a long, long moment, Dr. Leland asked, "What does that mean?"

"I believe the Joker didn't think what he was doing was actually wrong, so much as necessary- even if just to himself," Arkham explained. "I think it's safe to say that society became too much for him- particularly a society where Batman was such a central hero- and the maze of destruction that followed was his only way of coping."

_What did this mean?_ I wondered, hugging several files to my chest as I listened, my breath caught in my throat so I could remain undetected.

Another one of the residents asked, "What are you going to tell the judge?"

"As a psychiatrist, it is my job to tell him that I don't think the Joker was at all in his right mind when committing this elaborate act of terrorism," he said, and then paused for a long moment. "As a human being, and a citizen of Gotham City, I don't know whether or not I should just leave him at the mercy of the court."

I shook my head outside the staffroom.

Immediately following this, I heard him stand up and say, "As being a psychiatrist has always come before my own humanity, I will tell the judge exactly what I've found, and leave the rest up to him."

Suddenly, Dr. Arkham's foot steps were drawing closer to the slightly open door, and I scurried back to my task, burying my head in the filing cabinet as he stalked out of the room and out of sight.

* * *

A week and a half later, the judge ruled that the Joker was not guilty by reason of insanity, and sentenced him to high-security lockdown at Arkham. Because the city would have a field day over the Joker not being in prison though, the judge- with the adamant approval of the Commissioner and the new district attorney- decided that there would be another trial as soon as the Joker's psychiatrist deemed him well enough, and things would be figured out further then.

This, to me, seemed like complete and utter bull shit.

Basically, they were saying he wasn't guilty now, because he was insane. Okay. Fine. So they were sending him to Arkham. In a few months, or years, however long it took for him to get 'better' they would try him again, and obviously sentence him to prison or death. Because he would be somewhat sane then, right, so he wouldn't be able to get off with insanity. But didn't this go against the constitution? Wasn't this _illegal_?

The people of Gotham were pissed and scared though, so nobody was arguing against it.

And what was more important- at that moment, to me, at least- was that the Joker would be Arkham. On my ward.

I was thrilled at _this_ part of the judge's bargain, if nothing else.


	8. Bleeding Heart

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

****

Chapter Seven  
Bleeding Heart

Everyone was on edge the morning of the Joker's arrival at Arkham. The patients were acting up, causing trouble and misbehaving more than usual- half of them ending up in solitary at different intervals before noon. The nurses and attendants were all frazzled with the new arrangement, running around trying to keep the men under control, whilst fretting over how the Joker's presence would permanently change things. And meanwhile, the residents of the men's locked ward were spinning around in circles, unsure of what to do with themselves until he arrived. But me, I wasn't even there. I didn't have to come in that day, but I heard all about it from the nurses when I got back.

"It was a zoo," one of the day nurses, Beth, told me when I arrived the following afternoon. "An absolute madhouse."

I straightened up to my full height after putting my purse under the desk in the nurses' station, meeting Beth's eye.

Wincing, she said, "Poor choice of words."

I laughed. Beth was relatively new on the ward- had only just gotten her nurse's license and had opted to be a psychiatric nurse instead of working in an emergency room. She told us she preferred Arkham because she wouldn't have been able to stand the sight of blood in a hospital. I wondered if she realized what ward she was actually working on.

"But it was bad, Harley," she continued. "Everybody was up the wall- even Dr. Leland was freaking out."

"What about the Joker?" I asked, trying to keep the eagerness from my voice.

She shuddered. "Freaky- I'm glad he's on the gray ward, because I couldn't handle working around him on a regular basis."

Just then, an older nurse, Anne, came in. She took one look at us and good-naturedly rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me- You're gossiping about the new kid."

Beth smiled sheepishly.

"So what was it like when he came in? Was he in a strait-jacket and chains? Did he have one of those face masks on- did he have to be _wheeled_ in?" I fired.

Anne shook her head as she reached for a clipboard hanging on the wall behind us. "Kid, you gotta stop watching_ Silence of the Lambs_."

I tried to keep myself from blushing, because the Hannibal Lector transportation set-up is kind of what I had been picturing for the Joker.

"He came in a jacket and ankle cuffs, with a team of police officers, and hair as green as radioactive broccoli," Anne explained, checking something on her chart.

This surprised me. "That's it?" I asked.

"They didn't need much else," Beth interjected mildly.

"Why not? He didn't fight them?"

Anne put the clipboard back and said, "He was on too many sedatives and counteractives to know what was going on, I expect."

"Counteractives?"

"What are they _teaching_ you grad students?" Anne said, shaking her head.

Without any further explanation, she left the room. Turning to Beth I sent her a questioning look, but she shrugged, looking just as confused as me.

* * *

I found out later that the Joker was going through withdrawal- could hear his screams every time the gray ward doors were opened- which was often, considering there was a team of psychiatrists and general practitioners and addiction specialists going in and out day and night. Apparently when they had arrested him he had all kinds of drugs in his system, ranging from regular prescription anti-depressants to purely cut heroin, and the doctors had been giving him counteractive drugs to help ease the transition during the trial and transportation process. But in Arkham, he needed to be weened off those too, so he was left writhing in his cell, vomiting, convulsing, and screaming, fighting the withdrawal cold turkey.

And it was strange. Because this man had been this unbelievably powerful monster for so long- unstoppable in every way- and now he was weakened and vulnerable and crying in a micro cell. And while some people relished this- the fact that the Joker could be taken down several notches- it didn't sit well with me. I got no satisfaction in a man going through this much pain, no matter how much destruction and horor he had caused.

"Harley, are you okay?" Dr. Leland asked me one day, while I was recording a patient's time in seclusion near the nurses' station. A nurse had just come back through from the gray ward and I had heard the Joker's cries ringing out through the sliding door.

I shook my head, saying, "Can't you do something for him?"

Dr. Leland looked surprised and glanced toward the door. Calmly, she said, "No, not right now."

"But-"

"He needs to be completely free of any drugs before we can talk with him and prescribe him whatever he needs," she explained.

Shaking my head, I said, "I understand that, but isn't there soemthing you can give him to make coming down easier?"

"I'm afraid prescribing such drugs is not up to me," she replied, but something in the tone of her voice- the lilt of her words- made me realize that it could be up to her if she wanted it to be, but she wanted the Joker to suffer. "He'll be fine, Harley, don't worry."

And with that, she walked away, leaving me shaking with anger where I sat.

As I stared blindly at the patient records in front of me, I thought of everything I had learned in psychology, biology, chemistry, health, and picture images flashed through my mind. A distant memory of a health teacher talking about just how bad intense withdrawal can be. A psychology professor explaining the psychological and physical dependency that go hand-in-hand with being addicted to drugs. A doctor giving a seminar on chemical addiction and psychology, talking about a semi-synthetic opioid that was used to treat opioid addiction and the pain that comes with its withdrawal. The prescription pad on Dr. Leland's desk.

Quickly, I finished filling out the patient records with the appropriate times, filed them away, and slipped out of the ward. Knowing full-well that Dr. Leland was in a meeting with Dr. Arkham and the rest of the residences on the floor concerning the Joker's treatment, I took the elevator down to her office and used the spare key I had to get inside.

While I had been in Dr. Leland's office alone before, but it felt strange to be there under such circumstances. Without pausing to take in the tense, suspended air, I went over to her desk, unlocked the drawer, and pulled out one of her prescription pads. Pulling an old script from her garbage can, I put it next to the blank pad and let out an anxious breath.

I don't know what made me do it- what made me think it was okay to do something illegal and immoral and unethical and against every authority that I had been trusted to work under. Maybe it was my bleeding heart- my desire to help people- or my disgust at the way the residents and the rest of the city were treating the Joker, even if he was a criminal. Or maybe it was some deep-seeted knowledge of what was to come in the future. Regardless, I wrote out a prescription for a heavy dosage of the opiate with shaking hands, used Dr. Leland's signature stamp to sign it, and cleared everything away before leaving the office.

I returned to the ward as if nothing was out of the ordinary, the prescription burning itself into my conscience where it sat in my pocket.

* * *

"This for you?"

I tried not to look suspicious as the pharmacist studied me warily from over the slip of precription paper the following morning.

"I work for a psychiatrist," I said, hoping the lump of guilt in my throat wasn't evident in my voice. "I'm just filling it for her."

He stared at me a moment longer, then looked down and examined the script with suspicious eyes. My heart began to thud in my chest, and my throat tightened painfully, as I imagined the man calling the police. I could see my internship being taken away from me- my scholarship at Gotham School of Medicine being revoked, my whole career going up in flames and being ripped away before it could even begin.

Finally, the pharmacist looked up and said, "It'll be a few minutes."

Letting out a breath I didn't know I had been holding, I smiled and said, "That's fine," and watched as he turned away to fill the prescription.

The overwhelming fear that had felt so imminent and so real only moments before still lingered in the back of my mind as I waited for the medication. It reminded me brutally of all I had worked for to get to where I was and all I could lose by letting my heart bleed for a man that was more inmate than patient at that point. The collision of this fear and anxiety made my heart palpitate as my chest tightened and I felt my stomach curl in on itself.

"Here you go," the pharmacist said, pulling me out of my thoughts as he handed em the medication in a small white bag.

I could only manage a small smile for him before taking the bag, stuffing it into my purse, and hurrying out of the pharmacy.

I knew then, as I made my way up the sidewalk to catch the bus and go to Arkham, that I wouldn't be giving the opioids to the Joker.

I had completely lost my nerve.


	9. Freak Show

_Madness Becomes Her_

_

* * *

_

**Chapter Eight**

**Freak Show**

The pills remained in their bottle, in their bag, buried underneath sweatpants in a drawer in my room. I had no more fantasies of grandeur- of saving criminals from injustice- and the Joker suffered through the rest of his withdrawal unaided. And I think by the time he was completely detoxified _everyone_ on the ward was grateful that the screaming had finally stopped; as it had been driving the other patients- and even some of the nurses- up the wall.

But with the overcoming of one obstacle, came the uprising of another. The Joker was now sober- if not depressed and weak- and the residents began having individual sessions with him, as well as meetings where they all ganged up on him. Despite their efforts though, he said nothing.

In the hours that the doctors accumulated trying to get something out of the him, he didn't say a thing. Not one cryptic message, or one bad joke. Not even one slurred _word_. Sometimes he laughed at them, other times he just stared, so they had virtually nothing to go on.

"He torments a whole city with riddles and violence for months, and he holds his tongue _now_?" Dr. Leland fumed one day while I was filing in her office. "The bastard- the fucking tease!"

I considered her over the drawer I was working in, surprised- and kind of disgusted- at her outburst.

Remembering that I was even there, she looked at me and said, "Sorry, Harley, it's just- it's frustrating."

I tried to give her a sympathetic smile, but it was difficult. I wasn't feeling very warm towards Dr. Leland as of late.

Letting out a rough breath, she sank into her chair and said, "When you're done filing those, would you mind going to the gray ward and getting Fox's file for me? I have to make a call to Gotham United."

Slipping the last file into place, I shut the drawer, stood up, and said, "Sure."

Tiredly, I went up to the men's locked floor, walked through the white ward, and was buzzed into the gray ward. The guards let me go down the hall by myself and I soon lost sight of them in the length and complication of hallways. Halfway down the last hallway, I finally retrieved the patient's file from the slot in the wall.

I was about to go back and return to Dr. Leland when I realized the Joker was in this hallway- somewhere near the end. Stopping in my tracks and looking around, I remembered that the guards couldn't see me and that no one would really know if I went to sneak a peak at the criminal-terrorist and his file. So, with one last glance to make sure the guards were nowhere in sight, I continued down to the end of the hallway.

His cell was the last one on the ward, spread far from any other patients. There was only one small light in the cell- a hanging bulb over the toilet and sink- but it was so small that I could only make out the barest of outlines of the Joker on his bed.

Creeping forward, I slipped the file out of its hold on the wall and opened it. The notes were messy and filled with analysis of his pre-Arkham rampage. Everything else was "silence" this and "disobedience" that. There wasn't even any background information- like a real name or health records or anything- and it baffled me.

"Find anything interesting?"

I jumped and dropped the files I was holding when the voice startled me. My heart was racing as I stooped to pick everything up and said, "No-Not really."

Straightening up, I peered into the cell, but as far as I could tell, the Joker hadn't moved. I knew it was he who had spoken though, because I recognized the voice- drier and more tired than I had heard it on the news- but his voice all the same.

"What a disappointment," he said. "I try so _hard_ to be _interesting_."

Shaking, I replaced the file where I had found it and said, "S-Sorry."

"No," he said, and I just saw his silhouette sitting up on his bed. "Don't stop on my account."

"I should go-"

"What's your name?" he asked, cutting me off. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

I didn't answer.

He came up to the glass, but I still couldn't see him properly, just his outline.

"Come on, I won't _bite_."

I thought of_ Silence of the Lambs_ again.

_Don't give him your name. Don't give him any personal information that he can use against you. _

But this wasn't a movie. This was different.

"H-Harley," I said, a lump forming in my throat as I realized exactly who I was talking to. "Harley Quinzel."

He laughed. Once, and then for a good, long couple of minutes. Nervously, I looked up the hallway, afraid the guards would hear him and come down. I turned back to him, biting my lip, wishing he would stop. But his face was finally coming into view- lit here and there, as he shook, by the overhead hall lights. And I could see his hair, stringy and tinged green, falling in his face, the eyes glinting briefly, the gouged out lines around his mouth. And it made my breath catch in my throat as I watched him laughing gleefully.

"You're kidding!" he said, slapping his leg. "That's the best joke I've heard all _week_!"

I stared at him self-consciously.

"Is that your _real_ name?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, indignant now.

"Harley Quinzel," he said, and it sounded as if he enjoyed the way my name sounded- as if he was pleased with himself. "Harley Quinn. Harlequin."

I saw the connection.

"Nice name."

It left me floored to think that the Joker was giving me a compliment, but it also sparked something inside me.

"Why don't you talk to the doctors?" I asked, thinking that maybe if he liked my name he'd reveal some information to me. I carefully watched his half-shadowed face through the glass, trying not to stare at the scars. "They want to help."

The smile was gone from his lips, and he turned away from me.

"Who are you anyway?" he asked, as he stood at the sink, his whole body now lit up under the hanging bulb.

"I'm Harley-"

"Who are you _here_?" he growled, cutting me off. "Did they send you hear to get something out of me?"

"N-no, I'm an intern," I said, suddenly shaking. "I'm studying to be a psychologist."

He nodded to himself. "Is that why you were sneaking through my file? Hoping to do a little analysis yourself and get some practice?"

"No, I just-"

"What? You just wanted to get a peak at the freak show?" he asked, still not facing me.

"No!" I replied.

There was a long beat of silence.

Finally, I said, "I think you're an interesting person and I wanted to understand why you did the things you did."

This made the atmosphere freeze, and he didn't instantly retort with a scathing reply.

"I should go though," I said, my voice shaking once more. "I don't want to get in trouble, but it was- it was... nice meeting you."

And with that, I quickly left the gray ward.


	10. Negotiations

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

**Negotiations**

"No."

I sighed tiredly as I watched Barry drop a couple of Pop-Tarts into the toaster, his body tensed up in his t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. He was deliberately facing away from me, not wanting me to see the anger and hurt and loss in his features. Something inside of me- the big sister part of me- wanted to hug him and forget about the whole thing, but another part of me was angry. Really angry.

"Why not, Barry?" I demanded, holding my hot mug of tea tightly.

He didn't look at me or turn as his curt voice replied, "Because I don't want to."

"You're being so immature about this," I said, the anger boiling up just slightly.

Barry didn't answer, just stared down at the toaster.

"It's his birthday, Barry," I reminded him. "It's his birthday and he's our dad-"

Turning suddenly, he cut me off with an angry outburst: "He's not my father! He's nothing to me!"

My mouth dropped open in disgust and outrage. True, Barry and I never really talked about our father, and I suspected that he resented him and that he felt abandoned, but this- this wasn't fair.

"How- How can you say that?"

His Pop-Tarts jumped out of the toaster and he turned away from me. As he transferred them to a plate, he tiredly asked, "Can we not talk about this?"

"No," I retorted, pushing my chair back and standing up. My annoyance was climbing higher and higher, but it didn't surprise me. I had been running on a short fuse the past couple of weeks and the smallest things could set me off. Something as huge as my father and Barry and our never speaking about it was bound to send me over the edge. "Nobody in this family ever fucking talks about it and I think it's time we did."

Turning to face me, Barry shook his head, breakfast forgotten.

"Have you seriously forgotten how he used to read to us?" I demanded. "How he would tell us stories over dinner and let us rent any movies we wanted on Friday nights?"

My brother grimaced and shook his head, looking as if I disgusted him for a moment.

"Don't you care that he was the one who carried you home when you broke your leg in Bensonhurst?" I asked. "Or that he went to boy scouts with you-"

"None of that shit matters!" he shouted, cool-and-calm-Barry finally losing his temper. "He lied to us our whole lives! He's a bad person!"

I stared at him, feeling my whole body ringing from the impact of his words.

Shaking his head and grabbing his plate of Pop-Tarts angrily, he asked, "Are you so delusional that you don't see that?" And as he was walking out of the kitchen he said, "Get a fucking clue."

I was frozen for a long moment, staring at the empty doorway through which Barry had just left, until he switched on his stereo and flooded the house with a bass-broken 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' It was only eight in the morning, but Mom hadn't returned from her night shift at the diner. The family that lived in the other half of our two family house would complain about the music and I knew I should go upstairs and tell him to turn it down, but I was too mad to care. It would serve him right to have Mr. Dutta come over and beat down the door to get him to shut off Freddie Mercury and Co.- or better yet, to have the Duttas call the cops on him and his rock and roll tantrum. So, I undelicately placed my mug on the counter, gathered up my stuff, and left, the house thrumming with the noise of poor boys and screaming guitars behind me.

* * *

Dad knew right away that something was wrong.

"What's the matter?"

I shook my head, refusing to burden him with his idiot son's outright disloyalty on his birthday. "How's your day been so far?" I asked instead.

He considered me for a moment, before dropping the topic and smiling, saying, "It's been good. You know, as good as it can be in here."

I frowned.

"How's Arkham?" he asked. "Talk to any high profile crazies?"

He smiled, and I knew that he was joking, so I managed a laugh. I had told him about talking to Poison Ivy- and other patients that had been on the news or in and out of Stonegate that were now at Arkham- and I know he would have loved to hear about the Joker, but I just shrugged.

"Not really," I lied. "You know, no more than usual."

"They don't still have you cleaning out bedpans, do they?" he asked, taking a cookie out of the box I had brought.

I rolled my eyes, trying to keep myself from bristling too much. Did he really have to bring up my underling status at Arkham like that? "That was one time, Dad," I said. "And it was only because the nurses and attendants were handling an outburst in the dayroom."

"Hey, I just think they should be putting you to more appropriate tasks," he said, looking at me with pride. "Like prescribing medication and analyzing serial killers and overseeing patient treatment."

I smirked, saying, "Not yet. I _am_ only in grad school."

"Yeah," he agreed. "But you're capable of so much more, Harl."

I didn't know how right he was.

* * *

That Monday, I went to Arkham and found the residents on the locked ward had reached an all new desperation where the Joker was concerned. After trying everything they could- sitting and staring at him for hours, threatening him, keeping him in his cell with only meals to break up his day, interrogating him, spitting his own quotes at him in hopes of riling him up, etc.- they had finally broken down. Now, they were ready to negotiate.

They went into the big conference room- all the locked ward's residents, the Joker's doctors, his lawyers, Dr. Arkham, and the Joker, though he was strapped up and cuffed. All of us underlings held down the fort in the dayroom, glancing nervously down the hall to see what would happen when everyone reappeared.

"It's no use," Beth, who was working a double, told me as we stood off to the side of the dayroom, watching a paddle-less game of ping pong between two patients.

I knitted my eyebrows, saying, "What do you mean?"

"They're trying to negotiate with a man who is out of his mind," she replied, her voice low enough that only I could hear. "Where do they think they're going to get with that?"

"Maybe if he can control some of the shots he'll cooperate."

She rolled her eyes. "He's lucky he didn't get a one way ticket to Stonegate for life- or death- we shouldn't have to accomodate him any more than we already are," she said, craning her neck to see down the hallway.

I guessed that part of what she said was right, but I didn't really agree.

Down in the conference room, Dr. Arkham sat at one head of the table, the Joker at the other. They stared at one another over a pitcher of water and the glasses that circled it, the room silent.

"Mr. Joker," Dr. Arkham finally said, his voice stern but surprisingly welcoming. "We need you to understand that we only want to help you here."

The Joker didn't move or respond in any way, only continued to stare at Dr. Arkham.

"We need you to cooperate _with_ us in order for this to work," the head of the hospital said, his voice rising just slightly. "If you don't cooperate with us here you'll be turned over to Stonegate without question."

The Joker's tongue slipped out and wet his lips, but there was no other reaction.

Dr. Arkham leaned forward further and he said, "Your play for insanity is not going to work for the D.A. unless we say so."

Moving just slightly, to crack his neck to the left and then the right, the Joker remained silent.

"What do we have to do to make you cooperate with your treatment?" Dr. Arkham demanded, and no one at the table had ever seen him so subtly unhinged. "What do we have to do to make you talk?"

There was a long stretch of silence where no one said anything, though the Joker held Dr. Arkham's eyes the whole time.

After several long beats, he finally spoke, and he only said two words.

"One. Thing."

He had the movement back in his voice- the jerking movement that tugged at you when he spoke, the one from his homemade videos and his threats against Batman and his observations on society and Gotham. For the first time since being arrested and tried, locked up and drugged, and detoxed clean, he was the Joker again.

"What?" Dr. Arkham asked, his voice losing its hardness to desperation. "What is it?"

"If I'm going to cooperate, I'm going to do it on my terms," he explained, his voice lilting and curving and dancing around the room. "I'm going to talk to whom I want, and she is going to be my doctor."

The residents and doctors looked around the room, exchanging glances. Who would he choose? Dr. Leland? The old and graying, hippie psychologist on the ward, Dr. Simpson? Who did he want?

"Okay," Dr. Arkham agreed tiredly. "Okay. Who? Who is it that you'll speak to?"

The Joker licked his lips again, and then, with a big smile, he said two more words.

"Harley Quinzel."

* * *

I was oblivious in the dayroom, watching my game of ping pong alongside Beth. But then the doctors and lawyers were finally leaving the conference room, dispersing, and the Joker was being ushered back into the gray ward. Dr. Arkham and Dr. Leland, however, were making a bee-line straight for me, and I can't say I didn't panic where I stood.

Had he told them about my snooping through his files? Had he ratted me out to Arkham himself?

"Harleen," Dr. Leland said, her voice angry and flinty- underlined with jealousy and 'life-isn't-fair.' "I need you to come with us."

Silently, feeling the bile rising up in my esophagus, I followed Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham to Dr. Leland's office, allowing them to shut me into the small space with them.

"Is something wrong, Dr. Leland-"

"How does the Joker know you?" Dr. Arkham asked.

I swallowed, feeling my heart pounding against my chest, threatening to explode out of my ribcage. Finding my voice, I managed to say, "I- I- He talked to me when I was getting a file for Dr. Leland."

"Did he tell you anything? Did you counsel him in any way?" Dr. Arkham asked.

At the same time, Dr. Leland burst forth, demanding, "He _talked_ to _you_?"

"He just asked me who I was," I told them. "I just told him my name and that I was an intern. That's it."

The two doctors were silent for a very long time, and I found my thoughts racing. I saw myself being kicked out of my graduate program, expelled from school, sent away from Arkham, my career crumbling after all the hard work I had put into it- just because I had snuck a peek at a file.

"Is- Is something wrong?" I asked. "Am I in trouble?"

After a beat, Dr. Arkham said, "Harleen, the Joker has agreed to cooperate with us under one condition."

I felt the blood- hot and fast- rushing past my ears, and I waited.

"His condition is that he choose who he speaks to," he continued. "And the Joker has chosen you."

The floor was rushing up to meet me, so I stumbled over and fell into the chair in front of Dr. Leland's desk as she strode over to the window and looked outside fitfully.

"M-Me?"

Dr. Arkham nodded. "As an intern here you are bound to do what we ask of you," he said. "So, we will start prepping you today, and tomorrow you will have your first session with the Joker as his psychologist."

"B-But I'm only a student," I argued, feeling as if a million things were crowding against me at once. "I haven't even graduated- I wouldn't know-"

"We will be overseeing everything, Harleen," Dr. Arkham told me. "You need only be the conduit between the Joker and us."

I stared at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. This was crazier than even my wildest dreams. They wanted me to... The Joker wanted me...

What?

"If you refuse to accept, we will have to terminate your internship and refuse any credit to the Gotham School of Medecine," he warned me, his voice harsh and his eyes cold.

"What?"

He only stared at me, Dr. Leland's back to us.

They were threatening to cut me off and refuse me all of my internship credits if I wouldn't act as their sort-of spy to the Joker? Could they do that?

"Do you accept?"

I couldn't see any other way around it, so I swallowed down the dryness in my throat and nodded.


	11. Getting to Know You

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Ten**

**Getting to Know You**

"I don't like it, Harley," Mom said, as she, Barry, and I sat at the kitchen table having a late dinner together that night. "I don't like it at all."

I shook my head, my arms folded across my chest- I was hungry, but I couldn't even consider eating- as I said, "What do you want me to do, Mom? They're going to take away my internship credits if I don't do it."

"They can't do that!" she argued, neurotically shoving food around her plate. "It's not ethical! I'm sure if you talked to somebody at Gotham School of Medicine they'd be able to help you-"

"There's no point!" I replied.

Across the table, Barry was ignoring us both, still annoyed at me from our dad fight.

Shaking my head again, I explained, "Arkham has every right to take away my credits if they want to- I signed a contract with them from Gotham School of Medicine that said I'd do what they asked as their intern."

"Yeah, but within reason, Harley! This is ridiculous!" Mom argued. "We'll fight it! I'll go to Dr. Arkham and fight it."

"Mom, no," I said. "If I do what they want and end up helping them in treating the Joker it will look a hell of a lot better on my resume than my denying them."

And the truth was, I also didn't want to fight them. I had worked with Dr. Arkham and Dr. Leland all day, had spoken with a dozen other residents and general practitioners and psychiatrists and psychologists and police officers and lawyers at Arkham in preparation for my first session with the Joker. I had been tutored and schooled and fully prepared, and I had had all that time and more to consider what I was facing. So I was going to be the Joker's doctor. I was going to talk to him and he was going to talk to me and I was going to help the doctors at Arkham treat him. What was so bad about that? Wasn't this what I had wanted since I was little- since I had decided I wanted to be in the field of psychiatry? And the _Joker_! He was the creme de la creme of criminal psychotics! I had found him interesting from day one, but now I would be his doctor and I would be able to find out all the intricacies behind the way his mind worked. And, hopefully, the work I would do with him for Arkham would jumpstart my career before I had even graduated.

"I don't like it," Mom said once more, shaking her head. "I don't like it at all."

Fortunately, she had no say in it, and I would have my first session with the Joker the following afternoon.

* * *

They set up two arm chairs and a table with tissues and a lamp on it in an empty room next to the guards' station in the gray ward. Dr. Leland showed me to it, her bitter anger over her intern becoming the one person the Joker was deciding to confide in palpable all around us. I was left with the Joker's file, a legal pad full of empty paper, and the instruction that I was to record every single thing that came out of my or the Joker's mouth. And so I stood and waited, breathing in the musty smell of stone and iron as I shook with crippling waves of nervous anxiety.

To calm myself down, I tried to think of ways to open up the session.

_So, Mr. Joker, you chose to speak to me. Why? _

_How are you feeling today?_

_I'm going to say a word. You respond with the first word that comes to mind._

_Why don't we begin with you telling me a little bit about your childhood?_

My thoughts were cut off and I was startled where I stood by the sound of the door opening loudly and suddenly behind me. Spinning around, I saw a large, dark-featured guard guiding the Joker- who was bound with ankle and wrist cuffs- into the room. Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham came into the room as well. The guard sat the Joker down in the chair opposite mine, and made sure all of his shackles were secure. Leland and Arkham rounded on me like stern parents on the first day of school.

"Now, if there's any trouble Gus will be right outside," Arkham said, gesturing to the guard. "Dr. Leland and I will also be nearby if you need us."

I nodded as Gus stepped away from the Joker and his restraints.

"Good luck," Arkham said.

Swallowing down the nervousness in my throat, I tried to smile as I said, "Thank you."

Then, suddenly, everyone was filing out of the room. Dr. Leland, over her shoulder said, "Write everything down!" and then the door was shut behind them and we were alone.

The room seemed unbearably quiet now, and I nervously looked over at my first patient. He was staring up at me from the chair across the room, smiling pleasantly, though his scars made it garish. He folded his cuffed hands in his lap and sat back in the chair, looking completely comfortable. Realizing that I was standing in the middle of the room with my stupid legal pad and pen, I backed up and sat down in my own chair. With his eyes bearing into me from across the few feet between us, I suddenly felt stupid with my pencil skirt and sweater. It was as if he could tell I was trying to be professional- a real doctor, something that I clearly was not- and I wished I had worn jeans and a sweat shirt.

I was about to say something- though I had no idea what- when he spoke first.

"So," he said, his voice playful. "How are you, Harley?"

Swallowing again, I said, "I'm fine. How are _you_?"

"Oh, you know. I've been better."

My lips twitched into a brief smile at this joke and I jotted this down, feeling like I had nothing else to do.

When I had finished writing I opened my mouth to say something else, but he cut me off again.

"I bet you would like to know why I chose you," he said, leaning forward against his knees. "Hm? Out of all the head-shrinkers and sadists in Arkham."

I _had_ wondered...

At the hopeful look on my face, his smile widened and he licked his lips. Scooching forward in his chair slightly, his jumpsuit shushing against the leather, he lowered his voice and said, "It's because of your name." I knotted my eyebrows. "Like I said- Harley Quinn." He laughed and leaned back. "Harlequin! It makes me feel like I have a kindred spirit here."

My name. I grimaced.

"Smile!" he said, his voice rising higher. "Come on, that's a good thing! It makes me feel like there's somebody here that I can talk to!"

"Good," I replied. "Then let's talk."

He regarded me for a moment.

"Why did you-"

He waved his cuffed hands at me, making me stop. "Nuh-uh," he said, shaking his head. "Hold on, princess, I said I _felt_ like you were a kindred spirit, I never said you _were_."

My head spun for a moment. "I don't understand."

"Well, do you go on spilling your guts out to any Tom, Dick, or Harry you meet out on the street?" he questioned. "You have to _know_ the person first! You have to _trust_ them!" Shrugging theatrically, he said, "I don't know you yet. I don't _trust_ you."

"But you said-"

"My terms, sweetie," he reminded me. "We're doing this my way."

I stared at him for a moment, at the brown eyes and the scars in his cheeks, at the chapped lips and the golden brown at the roots of his hair. Then, I looked down at the legal pad in front of me and bit my lip. What was the point of me fighting him? If I played it his way I'd get information, and that's what Arkham and Leland wanted. It wasn't professional, it wasn't how things were done, and it went against everything I had learned about being a psychiatrist or psychologist up to that point, but he had chosen me and I would have to screw all the rules if this was going to work at all.

Holding back the urge to sigh, I asked, "Okay. What do you want to know about me?"

His smile stretched across his face once more and he bounced a little in his chair, rubbing his chained hands together. After considering it for a moment, he leaned back- taking up the pose of a serious psychoanalyst- and considered me with dramatic concentration.

"Tell me about your family."

"I live with my mom and my younger brother-"

"Names?"

Something made me hesitate in giving him their names, but I finally said, "Marcia and Barry."

"Marcia and Barry," he repeated. "Okay. Go on, go on."

"I live with my mom and my brother in Gotham," I told him. "My mom works at a library and a diner and my brother is in high school and he wants to be a rockstar."

"Mom works two jobs," he noted. "Financial troubles?"

Clearing my throat, I said, "We're fine."

"Single mother, raising two kids, one in grad school," he listed. "Financial troubles."

My mouth fell open at his audacity, even if he _was_ right.

"And brother has aspirations beyond his wildest day dreams," he said.

This I had to agree with. "Yes."

"And Harley Quinn wants to be a head-shrinker."

"Yes," I replied, blinking at him.

He stared at me for a beat, as if reading me, and then he asked, "Where's Dad?"

I froze at this. Squeezing the pen in my hand, I swallowed. I could hardly share my father with anyone, let alone the _Joker_. So, I did the only thing I could think to do- I lied.

"He's dead."

The Joker frowned. "How? When?"

"When I was in high school," I said quickly. "In a car accident."

"Poor Harley," he said. "You must have cried for weeks."

I thought of my reaction when Dad was found guilty and put in Stonegate. I remembered all the air leaving the courtroom, my stomach tightening, my vision closing in on me. I remembered crying for weeks and weeks on end- not only because my father was gone from my life and in prison for being a criminal, but because of the aftermath and everything that came with it. I cried because of Mom and Barry. I cried because of the kids at school- even the teachers- everyone treating me differently. I cried for the betrayal and the fact that I didn't care if my dad had this awful side to him, I could get past that- I _had_ gotten past that- I just wish he had shared it with me.

Feeling the ache in my throat and the burning in my eyes, I nodded.

The Joker clicked his tongue. "Poor, poor Harley."

"What about your dad?" I asked, blinking away tears. "Let's talk about him."

"Nuh-uh-uh," he replied, wagging a finger at me. "I don't know you yet. I don't _trust_ you."

Tiredly, I sat back in my seat, waiting.

"Any friends?"

I shrugged. "Here and there."

"But none worth mentioning."

"I guess not."

"Loner?"

"I keep to myself," I explained.

"But you've had friends."

I shrugged again.

"And nobody left an impression?" he challenged. "Come on, Harley, that's cold."

I thought of Poison Ivy in her little glass cell on the women's ward. Then I thought of Sasha.

"There was one friend," I said, surprised that I was even bringing this up.

"Go on," he urged.

Shaking my head, I said, "It was a girl I met in gymnastics-"

"You did gymnastics?" he asked, his voice sounding overly enthusiastic.

I nodded. "For ten years. And there was this girl who I met when I was fifteen- at a show."

"Name."

"Sasha."

"And what happened?"

Swallowing, I said, "We were really good friends. Um- it was just after my dad had- had died- and she was nice to me- where everyone else was being weird."

"Good, good," he was saying, as if urging on a patient through talking about a difficult ordeal.

"We stayed friends for two years- we were _best_ friends and I had never had one before," I told him, staring down at the lines on my legal pad.

"Then she dumped you."

Looking up, jarred into reality when I met his eyes, I looked toward the wall beside me and said, "No." Rubbing at my lips, I continued, "She got leukemia when she was sixteen and died just before she turned eighteen."

"Isn't that always the way," he said.

This pissed me off. That I shared something with him that I usually never even talked about with my mom, and here he was making a fucking joke out of it.

"You could be a little more sympathetic," I shot at him.

"I'm sorry for you loss," he deadpanned. "What'd you do then?"

Rolling my eyes, I answered, "I quit gymnastics."

"Were you any good?"

Scoffing, I said, "I was amazing."

"And you quit."

"I didn't want to do it anymore," I said. "It reminded me of her."

"Of course," he nodded. "Like a made-for-TV-movie."

"Fuck you," I said. "I didn't have to tell you any of that!"

His eyes burned with my profanity and he bounced once more in his chair. "All right, all right," he said. "No need to get hot."

I narrowed my eyes at him and dropped my legal pad and pen on the floor, folding my arms.

"So why the field of psycho-bullshit?" he asked. "Why not become a school teacher or a cowgirl?"

"I don't know," I answered after a minute. "I guess I want to help people."

"You want to know why I did the things I did?" he asked abruptly. "What makes me craaaaazy?"

"I guess."

"You think you want to help me."

Nodding, I said, "I _do_ want to help you."

He stared at me, not saying or doing anything, and I thought he was going to say something else, but suddenly there was a knock at the door and Dr. Leland was barging in.

"Time's up," she said coldly, staring at the Joker. "Time for our patient to go back to his cell."

Gus strode in and helped the Joker up.

I saw Dr. Leland's eyes go to the legal pad on the floor- the one that had only one jotted note on it, and I cringed.

She was staring at me as if she was going to kill me and I knew I would be in trouble.

"See you at our next session, doc," the Joker called over his shoulder as Gus led him out the door.

As he shuffled down the hallway I heard him humming 'Getting to Know You,' and it echoed throughout the corridor.

* * *

"This is unacceptable," Dr. Arkham roared across Dr. Leland's desk, and she stood next to him, looking smug. "You were in there with him for an hour and all you come up with is _this_?"

He slapped the notepad onto the desk and my one note glared back at me.

_How are you, Harley? I'm fine. How are you? Oh, you know. I've been better._

"What did you do for an hour exactly?" he demanded.

"Listen, he said he wouldn't talk to me unless he trusted me," I said in a rush, trying to save myself as quickly as possible. "I was telling him a little bit about my life and why I wanted to go into psychology."

Dr. Leland laughed.

"He said he wanted to get to know me so he could trust me!"

"This is unbelievable," Dr. Leland said to Arkham. "We give him a chance and he's just playing her like a _fiddle_!"

"He's not playing me!" I argued. "I get can through to him."

"Miss Quinzel, I understand that you're a novice at this, but you should know that it's not wise to divulge too much information with patients when you're in therapy- especially one as volatile as the Joker," Dr. Arkham said, as if I was a child. I tried to explain myself further, but he shushed me. "We will continue this- because the Joker is finally responding to us in some way- but you really have to get _him_ to talk next time."

I nodded, because I knew there was no use in trying to explain myself any more- and he _was_ right.

"Yes, Dr. Arkham."

He nodded with finality.

"Until tomorrow, Miss Quinzel."

That night I had thought I would have trouble sleeping- thought I would be riled up and disturbed by revealing so much to the Joker- but I found the opposite happened. I fell asleep quickly, feeling strangely calm and at ease.

It was nice to talk to someone and get stuff out for a change. Even if he was the Joker.


	12. Defense Mechanisms

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

**Defense Mechanisms**

My next few sessions with the Joker went much the same way as our first. I tried to get him to talk and he made me spill about myself instead. Dr. Arkham and Dr. Leland were not pleased, and they told me it was unethical, but they were so desperate and I was recording all of the Joker's reactions and the things he was saying, so they let me continue this way. The fact that I could be giving myself up to the Joker in some psychological way occurred to them, but if they had to sacrifice me in order to get something out of their high-profile, terrorist in-mate than that would be a small price to pay. I was only a lowly and willing graduate intern, after all.

And I _was_ willing. Most of the time he riled me up and he upset me- sometimes he downright disturbed me- but it always felt good to talk about myself and get stuff out. Even if it was just something as small as my favorite movie or how I felt about being Jewish. It had been a long time since I felt like someone cared, or someone was listening. And I didn't know if he _did_ care or not, but it felt like he did, and that was enough for me. For the first time in a long, long time I didn't feel alone.

There were days, however, where it took its toll.

Two weeks into our sessions I barely made it home before I found myself hunched over the toilet, throwing up violently. Images flashed across my brain, rapid-fire, words and stories spinning themselves into a ball of nausea, pushing its way up my throat. I saw blood and saliva, broken flesh and gum. Stitches. The crude handiwork of a man with too many problems. One of several stories about how the Joker had gotten his scars. And then, on top of that, I heard all of my confessions- everything I had told him and would continue to tell him- and felt the lonliness of my life press down on me like a hundred thousand stones on my chest. I felt the absence of my father, rubbed raw by the Joker's prodding 'daddy questions.' I felt my love for my dad and my fear of losing him, my inexplicable terror of being able to get on with life without him, and it made me choke and gasp and spit sour-tasting bile into the toilet water.

"Harley, are you all right?"

It was Barry, right outside the door, concerned.

I spit out some remaining foulness and managed to say, "I'm fine."

"Are you sick or something?" he asked. "Do you want me to call Mom?"

"Barry, I'm fine," I snapped. "The- The bus ride was just rough- I got car sick, that's all."

He retreated slowly after that, saying, "Okay. If you say so."

After he was gone I flushed the toilet and leaned my head against the rim of the tub beside me, allowing the cool porcelain to take the brunt of the heat off my forehead. My heart was racing in my chest and I was shaking badly, feeling the waves of a panic attack crashing all over me. It occurred to me then that I had a lot of issues to work out- issues concerning my dad and separation anxiety and my family and so many different things I couldn't pinpoint- and that I would need serious counseling myself when I graduated from Gotham School of Medicine.

If I wanted to be of any use to my future patients, anyway.

I didn't know how much time had passed before I heard a knock on the door.

"Barry! I said I'm fine!" I shouted, my voice quaking.

"It's Mom," was the response. "Are you sick?"

Swallowing past the awful taste in my mouth I said, "I'm fine."

"Barry said you were throwing up," she replied.

The doorknob rattled, but I had locked it.

"I'm fine," I said once more. "The bus ride was just bad."

She tried to turn the knob again, then hit her fist against the door a couple of times. "Harleen, open the door," she said.

Relenting, I crawled across the floor, flicked the lock, and then resumed my position against the tub. Mom stepped into the doorway and leaned against the wall, staring down at me penetratingly. I felt the urge to wipe my mouth and wash my face, brush my teeth and fix my hair, to get off the floor and hide in my room, but I didn't move. Instead, I stared back at her and waited.

"What is this?"

"Mom, the bus ride was rough-"

"Harleen," she said. "Don't lie to me."

I just continued to stare at her sheepishly.

"I'm your mother, I know for a fact that you've never once gotten motion sickness," she pointed out. "You do, however, throw up when you get overwhelmed or nervous."

Finally, I gave into the urge and wiped my mouth. "No I don't," I tried to counter defensively.

Raising an eyebrow, she said, "Oh? Do you remember what your first reaction was when your father was sentenced?"

I ran out of the room and threw up in the courthouse bathroom.

"No," I lie.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Why are you so worked up? Is it the internship? Is it this business with the Joker-"

"God, Mom, no!"

"-because that's a lot for them to put on someone who hasn't even _graduated_ yet-"

"Mom, I just felt nauseous, that's all!" I all but shouted, standing up and going to the sink, where I set about brushing my teeth.

She stared at me in the mirror for a good long moment, but I avoided her as I brushed my teeth in circles, then back and forth. I loved her, I loved her so much, but not like I loved Dad. I loved Dad desperately, to pieces, painfully, unbearably. I had an attachment that I didn't have to her, even though she had always been the one to take care of me when I was growing up. Dad was the elusive hero. The one who flitted in and out of the picture when I so desperately wanted him to stay. He was the one who was happiness and love and warmth when he was here, and darkness and depression and everything breaking when he left. I couldn't explain it. Couldn't analyze my own psychoses and separation anxieties, and I didn't need Mom trying to figure me out either. Especially when I was trying to not gag on the taste of toothpaste.

"Fine," she said simply, and then she finally left me alone in the bathroom.

I spit out the toothpaste, rinsed my mouth out, and finally took in a breath. My lungs expanded, and I felt lighter, if only for a moment, if only for now.

* * *

When I wasn't at Arkham or in session with the Joker, he was flitting through my head constantly. At the grocery store, when I passed some costume make-up. On the bus, when someone mentioned his terrorism. At Stonegate, when I visited Dad and thought of him being held hostage. And then, of course, at school. Around every corner and in every rat hole that I came across- whether I was learning about phobias or weird fetishes- I saw the Joker. I placed every possible disorder and quirk to what I knew of him, and I tried to figure him out. He was an enigma that followed me everywhere I went. I could see that his story ran deep- too deep into the intricate web of his madness and psychoses- and that it hurt. I could see, just from looking into his eyes, that he was in pain and that it was heavy. I only wished he would unburden himself from all of it and give it to me to help carry. I wished he would let me help and save him, because I honestly believed I could.

"Costume can be a very definite thing for one person, and then entirely separate for another," my professor, Dr. Kinck was saying one day in late June. "It can give one person power and inalienable prestige, while someone else can disappear completely."

I thought of the Joker then. I saw his stark white face, blackened eyes, green-tinted hair, and red-red lips.

"Some examples?" he said, looking around at us. "Celebrities like Lady Gaga or Marilyn Manson."

Some people in the class snickered at his pop culture references- probably because he was so old and said their names so stiffly.

"The Batman."

Everyone quieted down slightly, but my heart picked up speed.

"This year's terrorist," he added. "The Joker."

Dead silence. I swallowed past the lump in my throat.

Suddenly, Dr. Kinck's eyes met mine. "Perhaps we could pick our Joker expert's brain as to why he feels the need to be in costume."

Everyone turned and looked at me at once. The head of the psychology department, who was overseeing my internship, knew all about my sessions with the Joker from when they had started. She had told several of my professors, and from there it had spread to all of Gotham School of Medicine in May. My celebrity had died quickly though. Nobody talked to me anyway, and no one was going to start just to ask me for information about the Joker.

"I really can't say," I finally managed to reply.

The professor laughed a little, looking around the room. "Come on, Harleen, the Joker's done a lot of damage to Gotham, he doesn't exactly deserve confidentiality rights." Some students laughed at this. "Besides, you're not really a doctor anyway."

This stung, and I stared at Dr. Kinck with my mouth hanging open.

"Nothing you tell us will leave this room, besides."

Everyone sat around me, staring, waiting for me to divulge all the secrets of the Joker to a classroom full of nosy, selfish psych students. Secrets I didn't even have to begin with.

"What does his clown get-up do for him?"

I thought of the Joker, saw him sitting across from me, his face bare, his scars visible in all of their starkness. I saw the green fading from his hair and the shadows under his eyes purple, but natural.

"I'm not telling you that," I said.

Someone sitting a few rows behind me shifted in annoyance. A girl a row ahead of me rolled her eyes.

"It's not hard to guess," Dr. Kinck said arrogantly. "You might as well tell us."

"No."

"Fine," he turned from me. "Who would like to wager a theory as to why the Joker wears his costume?"

The girl who had rolled her eyes raised her hand. When Dr. Kinck nodded to her, she said, "Maybe he's always thought of the Joker as his alter ego, and it enables him to act out drastically, where he couldn't as himself."

No shit.

"Very possible," the professor said. "Anyone else? Mark."

A guy on the other side of the room said, "Maybe he had some clown phobia as a kid, and now he's turning it around and using it to traumatize other people."

"He probably just wants to hide those nasty scars."

"He's gonna need more than make-up and an ugly coat to do that!" someone joked back.

The class laughed.

I saw the Joker sitting in his armchair again, vulnerable and hurting and in so much pain, and trying to be someone else to hide all of that, and this hot, wild anger flared up within me.

Who the fuck did these people think they _were_? These were Gotham's future psychologists and psychiatrists? Where was their sympathy? Where was their fucking compassion?

"Maybe he gets off on being a clown."

"Maybe he just hates the real him and needs to hide behind something he can actually like."

"That's very good," Dr. Kinck said, and I knew he was only facilitating it all because I had refused to tell them all of the Joker's dirty little secrets. Also, the majority of my superiors in the field of psychology resented me in some way for being the one who was talking to the Joker.

"This is bullshit," I said, standing up and shoving my books into my bag.

Dr. Kinck actually looked surprised. "Excuse me?"

"This is the most unprofessional, fucked-up bullshit I've ever seen," I said without even looking him in the eye.

And with that I slung my bag over my shoulder and left the room, letting the door slam shut behind me.


	13. Common Ground

**_Madness Becomes Her_**

**_

* * *

_**

**Chapter Twelve**

**Common Ground**

"What's the matter?"

The Joker asked the question tiredly, as if I was bothering him and this matter was something we had to get out of the way. I looked around, confused. He had asked me if I had ever had a childhood pet and I was explaining how we had never lived anywhere that allowed pets when he cut me off with the sudden second question.

Shaking my head, I said, "Nothing?"

"Don't screw with me," he said, rolling his eyes. "I can see the heavy sigh just _building_ up behind your glasses. Was someone mean to you at school?"

I thought of Dr. Kinck and everyone else at Gotham School of Medicine. I thought of the credits I lost in dropping that class. I thought of my mom constantly hovering over me at home, and Barry stressing her out even more with his lack of ambition where his education was concerned. I thought of my dad- always- locked up in Stonegate and never near enough to me, even when I was sitting across from him at one of the visitors' tables. I thought of my grades, which were slipping since I had become so involved with the Joker and these therapy sessions. I thought of my life, which seemed to feel lonelier and longer and so heavy recently. And I thought of my anxiety, which was eating me alive every day because of _everything_.

"No, I'm fine."

"Harley, we're not going to get anywhere if you don't tell me what's wrong," he said, using some kind of super sympathetic and concerned voice.

I laughed dryly. "Who's the therapist here?"

He just continued to stare at me pointedly, waiting.

I tried to hold out for a long moment, but he was staring at me with those brown eyes, just waiting, so I gave in. Exhaustedly, I said, "I'm just really stressed out lately and I feel like shit- depressed and tired. There's this anxiety that's, like, eating at me from the inside out and I have these intense panic attacks. I've always gotten nervous when I get stressed, but this is like nothing I've ever dealt with before. I feel like I'm going to throw up and I can't breathe and the walls are closing in on me and I just- if this is how I'm going to live then I just want to die and that fucking _scares_ me."

The silence that followed my words was deafening, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. When I got the courage to look up and meet the Joker's eyes, he was looking at me very intensely, as if seeing me for the first time.

"You get hot," he said, and there was nothing mocking or cruel about his voice. He was just simple and matter-of-fact. "Like someone's sitting on your chest."

I nodded.

"You want to crawl out of your skin and climb up the walls."

"Yes," I whispered, my eyes burning with tears that I hadn't known had formed.

"You want to rip yourself apart because it's all just too- fucking- much," he finished.

A tear dropped out of my eye and I quickly wiped it away, nodding again. I felt so lonely- so misunderstood and crushed and tired- particularly that day, and the fact that he was voicing every crazy thought in my mind made me feel strangely better.

He nodded in return. "Yeah."

"Do you feel like that?" I whispered, and I didn't even want to know as his psychologist, I wanted to know as a fellow human being.

His eyes never faltered from mine- maybe sensing that we were just two _people_ here- and he said, "Every day. Every day of my life. Because, you know, things happen and they just- they fucking fuck with your head, you know? You see these God awful scenes that no one should have to endure and they play like a fucking film strip in your head and you can't do anything about it."

I stared at him, aching for him, my eyes brimming with tears I knew I shouldn't have been shedding.

"So on top of life just being too much to begin with- too much to make sense of , too much to compartmentalize and figure out- you have to deal with the fucking utter _tragedies_ that are your existence," he said, gritting his teeth, his eyes darting around the room. "Mommy not having enough to provide for her children, best friends dying, _Daddy_ dying."

He was turning it around so that it was about me again, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from lashing out at him for this. Part of me hated him, and another part of me loved him for kind of understanding.

"It's hard, Harley Quinn," he told me, his voice gruff and harsh now. "But that's life and you have to get over it."

I swiped at my eyes quickly, taking a deep breath.

"No one's going to fucking save you."

"They'll save you if you let them," I spit back. "Sometimes."

I had no one to save me, but he did. We were all trying. I wanted so desperately to wrap him up in my arms sometimes and just take all of the badness away, and that surprised me- that I had gotten so attached without realizing it.

He shook his head. "Everybody's got their own fucking agenda. Nobody cares that much."

I didn't say anything to this- couldn't think of anything to say to convince him otherwise.

"Time's up," he said, though we still had plenty of time left, and he left the room. Outside, I heard him say, "Doc's sending me back early today, Gus, let's roll."

I listened to the sound of his ankle cuffs clanking together all the way down the hallway, and I tried to not think about what Dr. Leland would have to say about our shortened session.

* * *

That day was the first time I lied to Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham about something the Joker said in our session. I told them what he said about no one saving you and life being hard, but I kept our talk about anxiety and panic attacks to myself. Part of it was because I didn't want them to know I had gotten so weak and confessed so much about my own problems to an inmate. But, another part was that I didn't feel right telling them what he had said. Something about the way he had said it all, the way his eyes had been so brown and sad and angry. It was in the slump of his shoulders and the angle of his ankles. I couldn't tell them what he had told me looking like that- _being_ like that.

"Why did the session end early?" Dr. Arkham asked.

"I- I feel sick," I half-lied. "I'm sorry but I think I've been fighting some kind of stomach flu for the past few days and it's finally catching up to me."

Dr. Leland didn't look particularly convinced by this, but Dr. Arkham just waved it off as he straightened his papers and files and closed them up. "Go home and get some sleep. Hopefully you'll be fine tomorrow."

And I did go home, planning to get an early start on my homework. Instead, I put on some sweats and crawled into bed. I didn't get out of bed the next day. I didn't go to my classes for the day, and I called Arkham to tell them I was too sick to come in- was hunched over the toilet and passed out in bed in intervals and that I would try to be in tomorrow.

And part of me did feel nauseous, but the kind of nauseous that comes from your mind, not your gut. I just felt so exhausted and depressed and overwhelmed and I just needed one day to reboot and sleep and get everything together before I could carry on.

I didn't know then that everything was only going to get exponentially worse.


	14. Catalyst

_Madness Becomes Her_

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Catalyst**

Things got both worse and better at the start of the summer. The event that sent it all into motion was simple, but it escalated into a huge, cataclysmic moment that would change my life forever. The event in question was this: the Joker, who was finally going to be put on anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medication, was transported from the gray ward, through the white, and downstairs to be examined by a general practitioner and the cooperating psychiatrists. When he was being returned to the gray ward, all cuffed and chained, he was in a bad mood. Something about being poked and prodded by condescending doctors, and the promise of being pumped full of prescription drugs, didn't sit well with him. So, as he was led through the white ward, he began to antagonize the patients.

"What are you in for? Being too _attractive_?" he catcalled. Or, "Did you screw your mother? You look like you screwed your mother."

They were just a few comments, but they were enough to set off the jealous, angry, and unbalanced patients in the dayroom, and they overtook the orderlies and nurses and attacked him. Cuffed around the ankles and wrists, he couldn't fight back, and I was told that he laughed the whole time. It wasn't until he was bruised and bleeding, with a broken rib and a full, black eye, that the orderlies and guards were able to regain control and call in a doctor for the Joker.

The next time I saw him his right eye was ringed with a sickly, puffy, dark purple, swollen almost shut. He had a cut in his lip and finger-shaped bruises around his neck. His torso was bandaged and set underneath his jumpsuit and he was being denied any pain medication.

"Are you okay?" I asked tentatively, watching him from across the room as he winced at his own breathing.

"Been better," he managed to say, coughing a little. "Been _worse_."

"Why did you do it? You must've known they would try to hurt you."

Rolling his eyes a little bit, the Joker said, "Boredom."

"What?"

"You just hit a dead-end sometimes and you get _bored_," he said. "Then you need to shake things up."

Silence passed betwen us and we stared at one another. I saw him shaking just slightly, and I saw that weakened, broken man behind his eyes again. I resisted the urge to get up, cross the room, and wrap my arms around him, once more.

"I'm sorry," I finally said.

He looked away for a second, then looked back and scoffed at me. "For what?"

"I'm sorry that they hurt you," I explained. "Sorry that you were cuffed and couldn't defend yourself. Sorry that the guards couldn't do their job sufficiently."

His jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

"I'm sorry that they have to put you on medication and that you have to be here at all."

Sucking at his teeth in annoyance, he countered, "They."

"What?"

"They," he repeated. "You say 'they' have to put me on medication, like you're separate from _them_."

This stopped me for a moment. I had said that. I considered this and knew right away that I _was_ separate from them. I didn't agree with with their methods, I didn't like who they were, and I was starting to hate everything they represented. They didn't pretend I was a part of their group either. They made it very clear that they were only using me and that I wasn't necessary for anything else. I was the in-between. That was it. I felt more comfortable being alone in our room with the Joker, than being anywhere with Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham, lying to them about what the Joker said and what I really thought about everything.

The Joker could see this revelation as it fell across my face and he watched me, his features set in a frown.

"I knew you were a kindred spirit, Harley Quinn," he whispered, and his voice, saying his name for me, sent unwarranted shivers down my spine. "We're _screwed_ _up_- you and I- you understand."

I looked at him then, considered my family- especially my father- and my childhood, Sasha's death, my anxiety, the feeling that I could always spiral out of control with no warning. I thought of the Joker before me, the way he made me feel like I was spiralling, always, but how he also made me feel like I was tethered to something- something, not particularly solid, but something nonetheless

I nodded wordlessly.

"Do you wanna know how I got these scars?" he asked, and something in his voice was different, serious, broken.

I didn't say anything, but he took my silence as a yes.

"I honestly don't know," he said, hunching his shoulders in on himself, sounding surprised at his own words. "Sometimes I'm sure it's one way, and then I'm sure it's another." He looked up and met my eyes, and I had never seen him look so vulnerable or pleading, and it made my heart break once more for him. "There are so many scenarios and ideas and stories I've played out in my head that I can't-" he hit his forehead with his open palms with each word that followed, "figure. It. Out."

"No scenario seems more real than another?"

He just sat with his head in his hands and said, "No," miserably, without looking up.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, after a long moment, because we both knew we were not playing therapist and patient anymore.

He looked up, the misery filling up his eyes. He looked like a little boy desperate for a way out- for help- and it made the anxiety bubble in my stomach. He was not supposed to look like that. He was supposed to be the big bad Joker, making stupid cracks and blowing up buildings. I wanted him to go back to that- I wanted him to be that person if only he would stop looking so sad.

"My dad hit me," he said, suddenly. "He smacked me and Mom around all the time."

"Are you..." I was about to ask him if he was lying, but I stopped.

"I was always trying to make him happy, to make him smile, but it was never enough," he said. "Never funny enough, never smart enough, never good enough."

He shook his head and I swallowed.

"Then Mom died after I got accepted to Dad's alma mater and nothing. Mattered." Hiding his head in his hands, he wouldn't meet my eyes and his voice was half-buried as he said, "We fought- one night- it was big and messy and I hit him and I- I just lost it."

"Joker," I whispered, and it was the first time I called him by any kind of name to his face.

He ignored me and continued. "He knew I was _crazy_, but he was too scared of what people would think, so he gave me a severe slap on the wrist and never brought it up again, but it happened more than once. It was like somebody had broken the seal and I kept having these attacks where I would just go _crazy_ on Dad."

"What happened?" I asked quietly.

"I left one day, right before school," he said. "Just packed up and never went back."

There was silence between us, and I considered saying something, but stopped myself.

"Found out he killed himself a year and a half later."

I put a hand to my mouth, surprised and hurt for him.

"Good riddance," he said in reply, looking up for a moment to laugh.

"Then there was the trouble, with the mob and the gangs, and the bills and the drugs," he said, looking down once more. "There were the thoughts and the voices and this- this fucking _detachment_ from reality- and I've never been so psychotic in my _life_!" He shook, holding his head in his hands once more. "And then there was Jeannie and Mom and Dad and fuck fuck fuck-"

He started hitting himself on the head repeatedly and I jumped up, my legal pad and pen falling to the floor and I knelt in front of him, grabbing his hands and pulling them away from his head. The whole while, I said, "Stop stop stop!" Holding his hands firmly in mine, I looked him in the eye and said, "Don't."

I was trying to process what he had just said- what it could mean. Mobs and gangs, bills, drugs, voices, detached from reality, Jeannie- who was Jeannie?- his parents, everything- but first and foremost was him, right in front of me. He was staring me in the eye and he was breaking down. We stared at one another for a moment, his large, cuffed hands in my small, free ones, no sound but the sound of our breathing between us. I could see him relying on me, spilling everything to me, counting on me and leaning on me, and I wanted to open my arms to him and save him. We shared this moment, where he wanted help and I was more than willing to give it, for only a moment. Then, he was shutting down and he was far away again, his eyes no longer allowing me into their depth. He didn't pull his hands out of mine, but they were like warm, dead fish in my grasp.

"You can't save me, Harley," he said bitterly, as if I should have guessed this. "No one can."

"You need to let me try," I begged, tears springing to my eyes.

His hands flinched in mine.

"I don't need to do anything," he replied, and his voice had that Joker lilt to it.

"I know you think I can't help," I whispered, grabbing his hands more tightly. "But I'm not giving up. You can't get rid of me that easily."

He stared at me for a long moment, as if taking this in, and then his eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. "Times almost up," he said.

I kept his hands firmly between mine and said, "Do you hear me? I'm not going anywhere."

He didn't say anything to this, so after a moment I got up and sat back down in my chair, retrieving my pen and pad from the floor. Right on cue, the guard knocked on the door and came in, saying, "Time's up."

The Joker stood and moved to go without a word. Just before he left he kept walking but said, "See you next time, doc," and his voice sounded a fraction lighter.

I smiled to myself as the door closed behind him.

* * *

"What are you smiling about?"

Dr. Leland was annoyed with me- again- and Dr. Arkham eyed me from across her desk.

I shrugged.

"You really have no reason to be smiling," she snapped. "You're not making any progress with him."

This wiped the smile from my face. Of course I lied to Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham about what the Joker told me- I could never tell them what he'd said to me in moments of weakness like that- but his ramblings were still running through my head. His parents and the trouble. Jeannie. The voices and the thoughts. The detachment.

Dr. Leland didn't know it, but I _was_ getting somewhere.


	15. Sexual Tension

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Sexual Tension**

It didn't take long for me to become completely and utterly obsessed with the Joker– it was almost immediate after our last session. He was all I thought about, all I cared about. At school, I would think about our sessions in all of my classes, trying to connect everything I learned to him. At home I tried to bring him up with Mom and Barry, but there were only so many times I could do that without divulging everything he had told me, everything Dr. Leland and Dr. Arkham had told me– without violating a hundred different rules and raising suspicions concerning my interest. And during my free time I always wanted to get back to Arkham, itching for my next session with him and whatever epic, cataclysmic conversation it would inevitably bring. Because, honestly, any conversation I could have with the Joker would be cataclysmic and earth-shattering at this point.

And part of me knew that I was crossing into the wrong territory, out of the land of patients and doctors and psychiatry, and into that of immorality and obsession and– love? But another part of me simply didn't care. I could help this man. I could fix him. Isn't that what was important? Wasn't that ultimately what I wanted to do as a doctor? What did ethics matter if the end result was the same?

And, maybe in the process, he could help me too. Who could know?

"He's not as scary without all the paint and make-up," I was saying to Dad when I went to visit him that weekend. "He's just a normal guy who's scarred and misunderstood."

"Harley."

I looked up from picking the M&M's out of one of the cookies I had brought him– having needed something to do with my hands.

"He's not just a guy who's misunderstood though," Dad said. "He's a murderer– not to mention a terrorist."

I crushed a small piece of cookie under my finger, refusing to continue looking my father in the eye. Because I didn't want to argue about the Joker, and I didn't want to lie about him either.

"Harl."

I crushed another crumb, saying, "Everybody's human, Dad."

After a long moment, he sighed. I looked up then and saw him shaking his head, putting his cookie down on a napkin on the table, looking as if he was all-knowing and had seen some disappointing thing before it had happened, and it was happening now before his eyes.

"What?" I snapped, annoyed.

"Do you think you could maybe talk to these doctors– Arkham, maybe? Get them to have someone else do this?"

My mouth dropped open at this, and I was confused and disgusted and very, very annoyed. "_Why_ would I do that?"

"Because, Harl," he said, leaning closer, his voice soft. "You're just a student still– you're not cut out for this."

I leaned back, staring at him with knotted eyebrows. "Why not? Weren't you the one who said I should be doing more important things there?"

"This guy is getting to you," he said. "Do you hear yourself? You're calling this terrorist 'misunderstood.'" He shook his head, saying, "You're smart– you're _so_ smart, Harleen– but I don't like how this guy is playing you. Somebody with more experience could–"

"He's not playing me!" I shouted back, raising my voice.

"What do you call what he's doing then?" he countered.

I felt like he was attacking me– attacking the Joker, demeaning us both– and I got defensive right away. My hackles up, claws out, teeth bared. It was so easy for anything to set me off those days, that this– what I was sure was a personal attack– sent me over the edge in a matter of seconds. I was sick of people thinking I wasn't cut out for what I was doing, sick of having to explain myself and pussy-foot my way around everyone to make sure everyone else was happy. I wasn't doing it anymore.

Shaking my head, I crossed my arms, rolled my eyes and said, "He's confiding in me– his _doctor_." "He's playing you, Harley," he countered, leaning even closer still, his voice a low hiss.

"He's playing you so you'll bend to his will– so you'll run and tell the doctors what he says and they'll stamp him insane and he'll be nice and comfy, sitting pretty in Arkham, instead of getting a lethal injection like he should."

It felt like he had slapped me in the face. My father. My hero, despite all the things he had done to me and our family, to himself. Playing you. Stamp him insane. Sitting pretty. Lethal injection. I felt like my head was spinning– like I was going to throw up.

"He's a terrorist."

Suddenly, I uncoiled, pressed my palms against the table and leaned forward, and spat, "Who are you to pass judgment, Dad? Aren't you sitting in a jumpsuit right now too? Don't your wife and son refuse to see you?" His face fell at this, a visible drop in his features, pulled up only by shock. "His jumpsuit might be red, and yours might be orange, but it's still a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black."

With that, I stood up and grabbed my bag.

"I always gave you the benefit of the doubt, Dad. Maybe that was wrong too," I said, and without looking back, I left the visitors' room.

* * *

I was getting out of my Neuropsychology class, stuffing my notebook into my bag, when I bumped into someone near the benches outside the library. I had ten minutes to catch the bus to Arkham and I was already anxious to get there, so I was harried and flustered when this person walked into me, took my arms in his hands, and tried to right me in place.

I didn't even mumble an apology, was only going to walk around him and continue on my way, when he said, "Sorry, I didn't– Harley Quinzel."

Looking up at the sound of my name, I saw a guy I barely recognized, looking back at me with clear blue eyes and a pretty, crooked smile.

He stared at me, waiting for me to recognize him. I just looked at him blankly, impatiently, in no mood to play this game.

He looked a little disappointed when he had to fill in the gaps for me. "Ben Ritchie," he said. "We went to Gotham U together– you were my lab partner in freshmen bio?" When this didn't ring any bells he continued. "You're in my Theories of Personality class?"

I couldn't place him as my lab partner– that was too long ago– but I briefly remembered him sitting across the room from me in Theories of Personality, usually pretty vocal in the class, flashing smiles here and there and giving his opinion on a lot of things.

"Right," I said. "Sorry I bumped into you."

I tried to walk around him again, but he stopped me with his hands, saying, "Wait, I'm actually glad you did."

I must have looked annoyed, blinking my eyes at him in frustration and impatience, but if I did he didn't let on that he saw it.

"I heard you're the Joker's psychologist– over at Arkham," he said. "That must be pretty crazy."

_Poor choice of words, Ben_, I thought to myself caustically.

"Anyway," he continued, seeing the blank, if not chilly, expression on my face, "I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go out sometime– maybe to a movie or dinner– or just coffee if you want."

The Joker flashed in my mind, and a proprietary, guilty tug pulled at my chest.

"No," I blurted, no sense of etiquette or politeness stopping me. "I mean– Um– that's nice of you, but I really don't have a lot of time– I'm so busy with school and the internship… No."

And before his look of rejection and confusion could make me any sicker, I hurried away, turning my thoughts to catching the bus once more, though the thought of Ben managed to push its way through.

* * *

I was kind of stunned as I sat in our little therapy room, waiting for the Joker that afternoon. It hit me, as I was sitting on the bus, driving through Gotham, that Ben Ritchie was probably the first guy to ask me out since high school. After Dad had gone to jail, I became a social pariah, and I kept myself that way throughout college, filling my time with studying and working, and avoiding eye contact. People sometimes strayed into my path, tried to break me down and pull me out, but it never worked. They all eventually gave up and left. And there may have been one or two guys who showed interest throughout the years – interest in my pretty blonde hair, or my big blue eyes, or my pouty lips, but never _me_– but I usually made it clear to them that I didn't want anything they wanted, before they could actually utter any kind of invitation for a date to me. But Ben had asked me. When I hadn't even spoken two words to him– except for freshmen biology, apparently. It left me confused and stunned.

Presently, the door opened and the guard pushed the Joker into the room, and he stumbled in, saying, "Gee, thanks, bud," and smiled big for the guard as he closed the door against him.

Sitting down, the Joker eyed me and said, "Hey," dragging out the word and lilting it in a silly way.

I came to, realizing that this was the first time I had seen him since the session we had had where he told me all about his childhood and his father and his pain, and it hit me that this took precedence.

"Hi." I remembered kneeling in front of him, with his hands in mine, pledging myself to him, vowing to be there for him and to help him– telling him that he couldn't get rid of me easily. I remember that vulnerable, sad slump of his body, in his eyes. I blushed, feeling shy all of a sudden. As I remembered everything and the heat spread up my neck, I repeated myself, more quietly saying,

"Hi."

"Well, don't you look _sheepish_?"

I wasn't sure what to say. I couldn't say I was embarrassed because we had had such an intimate session last time, or because I had vowed my loyalty to him. So, instead, I said: "Somebody just asked me out on a date."

He stopped, his smile frozen on his face, looking from side to side. It was as if he was wondering whether or not he should care, like he was figuring out how to react. "Aaaaand?" he finally said. "Is he _cute_?"

I knotted my eyebrows together and said, "I don't know."

He considered me for a moment– like he could see right through me– and he smirked. "Don't you want a boyfriend Harley?" he asked, pouting and batting his eyelashes at me.

I shrugged.

"Why not?" he countered.

"I don't know," I replied, feeling like I was losing control of this session before it had even started. I had wanted to talk more about his family and his past today, maybe bring up Batman and his obsession with him. "How have you been?"

He shakes his head. "Haven't we talked about me enough?" he asked. "That was a _gold mine_ for your head shrinking– I'm sure old Arkham and his cronies ate all of that shit up about Daddy and my history of _abuse_."

"I didn't– I didn't tell them any of that," I replied, feeling my heart start jackhammering in my chest.

He stopped, smirked. "Lying to defend my honor. My hero."

This was like a slap across the face. I had thought he would appreciate my discretion.

"You're going to lose your job that way, Harls," he said, clicking his tongue in a scolding way. "Watch yourself."

"How about for every question you ask me, I get to ask you one?" I suggested, ignoring the small kernel of doubt that had formed in the back of my brain. Had he lied about his father and the abuse? I plowed forward: "That way it's equal."

I wanted desperately to get him to open up again, but he was in one of his strange, playful moods today, and I couldn't see him confessing anything to me. However, that didn't mean I wasn't going to try. I genuinely wanted to keep us on equal footing. I wanted to show him that he couldn't shake me, that he couldn't drive me away. Because I was sure that's what he was trying to do. We had gotten close last time we had met, and he was afraid of that. So he was going to try to backtrack and divert my attention to myself and my own flaws once more. But I wasn't going to let him do it.

"Maybe if I like the question," he reasoned, wagging his tongue at me in exaggerated annoyance.

"Okay."

"Me first," he announced. "Why no boyfriend?"

"I don't know." Before he could say anything else, I asked him my question: "Why did you do everything you did to Gotham and Batman?"

He waved his cuffed hand at me. "I wanted to," he said dismissively. Then, he asked: "Do you like _girls_?"

Blushing, I said, "No."

"So then why no man candy?"

"I don't know," I replied, feeling warm all of a sudden. "I guess because I haven't met the right person yet."

"Virgin?"

"That's none of your business," I said, averting my eyes.

Why had I mentioned Ben Ritchie asking me out? Why did we have to go this route now?

"So, yes," he said in return, looking gleeful. "How far _have_ you gone?"

"Why do you– Why do you hate Batman?" I asked, trying to divert his attention from me.

"Have you ever even been _kissed_, Harley girl?" he asked, pouting at me in faux sadness.

I couldn't meet his gaze for fear he would see the truth.

Apparently my refusal to look up answered his question enough though.

"Harley-Harley Quinn!" he sang, sounding amused. "What have you been _doing_? We need to fix this!"

He was antsy, bopping excitedly in his chair at this new piece of information. God, how did he always manage to get the most embarrassing things out of me? And why was he trying to get this session as far from the last possible? Didn't he trust me after that? Hadn't I proved myself?

"And here I thought you were a closet vixen!" he catcalled, shaking his shoulders and his head as if he were getting chills.

"All right," I said, narrowing my eyes at him. "Enough about my love life, all right?"

"Fine," he agreed, sitting back in his chair, his cuffed hands in his lap. "Sore subject. We'll come back to that."

Or not.

"How do you feel about Batman?" I asked, wondering if there was some correlation between what had happened with his father and what he had done to the vigilante. I wondered if I could get this session serious enough that he would confide that information in me.

"I can't remember," he replied, as if it was the most nonchalant thing in the world.

"Why are you being this way?" I asked. "We actually _talked_last week."

He rolled his eyes, as if I was being dramatic.

My heart pounded in my chest once more, as I got up the nerve to ask: "Did you forget about everything you told me last week? Everything I said to you?"

He just stared at me blankly.

Fine.

"How do you feel about Batman?" I persisted. If he wasn't going to acknowledge what had happened, I wasn't going to play the fool and insist.

"I love him. I'm crazy for him. I'm _gay_for the Batman!" he yelled, his voice rising louder and louder with each word.

I flinched, managing to scribble his false words down, if only to spite him.

"Have you ever thought about killing yourself?"

My head snapped up at this question, and I stared at him, dumbfounded. He was looking me square in the eye, his mouth set and his body still. He looked completely normal for a moment– save for the scars– not vulnerable or broken, or terrifying and psychotic, just normal. It startled me. Why this question? How had we gone from never being kissed, to the Batman, to suicide? The question made my stomach twist nervously and I swallowed. I had mentioned finding it difficult to live once before to him– about bending under the weight of overwhelming anxiety and being scared that it would make me unable to face life all together.

Shaking my head, I said, "No."

"Not even when Daddy dearest died?"

I flinched against this. "No," I said, my voice shaking. I didn't want to get into this lie, even if he wasn't going to accept that he had spilled his truths to me last week. He had done it, and I didn't want to face that I was still lying to him about my father. I didn't want to think about Dad around the Joker, especially after my last visit with Dad. "Have you ever thought about killing yourself?" I asked instead.

It stood to reason that he had. What with all the drugs he had been taking, the self-destructive tendencies, the damage he had done to Gotham without regard for the consequences.

Deflecting my question, he jumped back to my father. "You were close with Dad?"

I didn't like talking about my dad, it made me feel naked and vulnerable– with anyone, let alone the Joker. Nervously, I began to jiggle my foot a little, and I wrote down the Joker's suicide question and lack of an answer on my notepad for something to do. Gnawing on my bottom lip, I avoided his eyes.

"_Very_ close with Dad," he surmised.

This was so far from where I had expected this session to go it almost made me angry. My hurt was morphing into frustration, and frustration into chilly-hot anger.

"Daddy's little _girl_."

"Okay, yes," I snapped.

"How did he die?"

"I told you," I said, feeling nervous– like I was teetering on a tightrope. "He was in a car accident."

"Yeah, but I want details," he replied. "Was he crushed between the steering wheel and his seat? Was he impaled by the guardrail? Decapitated by a truck bed? Brain hemorrhage?"

I thought of my father, safe and whole in Stonegate, and I felt sick as I imagined him dying by the Joker's proffered scenarios. Was I wishing some kind of ill fate on him by lying about him being dead?

The Joker was about to make another suggestion when I said, "Stop. Please."

Staring at me for a long moment, he asked, "Is that why you've never had a boyfriend?"

"What?" I asked, because I didn't understand. I looked at him and saw him raising an eyebrow, smiling, looking malevolent and sickly pleased.

"Your Elektra complex never ended?" he prodded. "Daddy was the only one who could touch _you_?"

Feeling dizzy, my mouth dropped open and I gaped at him. "No! No, of course not! How dare you?"

I was seeing red. The very idea disgusted me– that he was putting my father in that kind of light, that he was questioning our relationship and making it a tainted thing after I had lied for him, put myself in front of him and held his hands, pledged myself to him, vowed to help him and never leave him. My father may have been guilty of a lot of things, but incest was not one of them.

"Dads can be so cruel when they deprive us of their love. Huh, Harley Quinn?" he spat. "It must be so hard for you, to have his love one day, and then– poof!– gone the next. Must have left your bed pretty cold."

With a flash of blinding anger– the kind of seething anger that had been popping up for months now, scaring me with its overwhelming and unfamiliar power– I was up and across the room, right in front of him, on top of him, slapping him across the face. Hard. I didn't care if the guard heard, I didn't care if they carted me out of Arkham and ripped up every diploma and credit I had ever received. All I knew was this anger and outrage– this betrayal and pain-cum-horrifying fury.

When the room was silent and he was underneath my knees pressing into his as I leaned over him, I was able to see again, and I saw his eyes, looking into mine, looking wildly exhilarated, excited.

"Fuck you!" I hissed, pushing myself away from him. Turning, I bent to pick up the legal pad and pen that had fallen on the floor upon my flying across the room. I stood and tossed them onto my empty chair, when I turned to tell him our session was done for the day, I found him staring back up at me in wonder.

"I think you've earned yourself a question," he said gaily.

I could only think of one, so I asked, "Who was Jeanie?"

His face transformed in an instant. He went black and shut down.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?"

He didn't say anything. He just got up and went to the door, saying, "We're done for the day."

"But–"

Suddenly, he was spinning around and our noses were almost touching. "We've played our games, Harley Quinn, but this is not one of them," he growled, so low, but deep and huge. "Don't fuck this up."

I shivered– and, perversely enough, it almost felt like I was shivering in _pleasure_. Then, he opened the door with his cuffed hands and slammed it shut behind him.

* * *

That night I dreamt of the Joker.

His face was all done up with his beautiful make-up– stark white, ruby red, coal black– and he was in his three piece suit. A face that once evoked so much fear and mayhem in Gotham, somehow set me aflame, made me quiver and yearn.

We were in the library at Arkham– the one that housed all the records and medical books, the huge, endless space, with shoddy lighting and endless shelves of texts and files– hidden away in the depths of the silent cavern. I was running away from him, hiding behind stacks, and turning every corner I could, dressed in my old unitard, of all things. And as I ran, there was nothing dangerous or frightening about it– in fact, it was teasing and fun. Flirty, almost.

He finally caught me by the hand as I was turning a corner, and he yanked me backwards. I stumbled into his chest, fingering the buttons of his vest, our bodies pressed flush against one another, and I looked up to meet his eyes, feeling weak.

"Why so serious?" he whispered, so low, before closing the space between us.

His lips were on mine and my mind was instantly clouded with want, wanting more of those lips, his words, his touch, his breath, hot and rushed against my mouth. I clutched at his slicked hair, pulled at it, wanting wanting wanting. And then suddenly, his hands were on the slick, tight fabric covering my body, running up my breasts, and down my stomach, making me tighten my arms around him, pull him even closer, one leg hooked around him, locking him in place.

He had me up against the bookshelf behind us, was running his hands over the length of my body once more, when I woke up with my heart careening out of my chest, my whole body trembling, my thoughts whirring a mile a minute.

When I realized where I was, that I had been dreaming, I kicked my blankets off and let the sweat cool on my body, let my heart rate return to normal. But there was desire still throbbing within me, frustration rippling at the seams of my unfinished dream, and it left me floored. What was this? Was this what I was feeling for the Joker? I couldn't wrap my head around it– couldn't let myself recognize that this had happened– and I stared into the darkness, unable to fall asleep until early morning light was coming back in through my bedroom window.


End file.
